Paper short abstract:

The contribution addresses the concept of care in the field of childbirth by taking into account women's birth narratives. It will be discussed how narratives can be a means of understanding and shaping care.

Paper long abstract:

Over the course of the last thirty years, birth culture in western societies has undergone a steady change from medicalization, over biomedicine criticism, to remedicalization. The concept of care has also been part of these changes, that is, the profession of the midwife, the involvement of the partner or even technologies of pain relief.

My contribution will discuss empirically how women today experience childbirth against the background of advancing technologies, staff cuts in birth clinics, and the recent changes in midwifery (given the the example of Germany). For this purpose, I will present a collection of birth narratives from an Internet forum for maternal interests that discuss the issue of care during birth. It will be asked how the interdependences between the birthing women, their partner, obstetricians/midwives, obstetrical devices and the birth clinic itself are discussed and narratively framed in the women's stories. Furthermore it will be discussed if taking "narrative" into account could be an "other means" to shape care.