Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the complexities regarding the experiences of preterm babies’ parents and health professionals at the NICU of a hospital in Barcelona. It shows how both newborns and parents find themselves in a liminal space where their individual identity (personhood) is often challenged.

Paper long abstract:

The definition of personhood and the entanglements thought which this notion is socially constructed have been a rich field of study for social anthropologists. When examining the elements that shape this definition, social and technoscientific understandings of pregnancy and birth have been considered as crucial sites to understand it. According to the Spanish law, personhood is assigned from the moment a baby is born alive and is completely detached from the mother’s womb. This aspect is closely linked to the notion of viability, which refers to the point in gestation in which the fetus is presumed to have chances of survival outside the uterus.

Based on fieldwork in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of a hospital in Barcelona, we argue that the notion of liminality is crucial to understand the ontological choreographies of newborns and parents in this specific context. Being situated between life and death, newborns often find themselves in a “liminal space” where their identity as individuals becomes an unstable category. In the same way, also parents become liminal beings, as their feelings towards their babies are often ambivalent and their roles as “mummy” and “daddy” (as the medical staff often refers to them), may be difficult to assume and highly dependent on the progress of their babies at the NICU. Navigating through the testimonies of health professionals and parents, we show how the boundaries of “personhood” become blurry and contested between medical staff, newborns and parents, all of which participate in the discussion in different ways.