Paper short abstract:

Through offering prenatal screening, the Swedish healthcare system reproduces ideas about the normal family. Observations of online family forums show how screening actualizes these norms in the lives of expecting parents, affecting how they take on the parent role and prepare to welcome a child.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1970’s prenatal screening has become an integrated part of Swedish antenatal care, providing expecting parents with more and more information about the fetus. Through screening for certain, specific conditions, such practices both produce and reproduce ideas about what is normal and not, and concretely help reproduce a certain, able-bodied nuclear family. Further, prenatal screening and other healthcare practices targeting the fetus rather than the pregnant person – often visualizing the fetus via ultrasound – construct the fetus as an individual, separate from the pregnant person.

Both these effects of screening come to the fore as expecting parents share their screening results on online family forums. A pilot study with ethnographic observations of such forums suggests that posts about prenatal screening can be roughly divided into two categories – those who test within the perceived bounds of normality and who, adopting a future oriented attitude, are trying to get to know their baby better through guessing its sex. And those at risk for deviations, who instead are frozen in a limbo of uncertainty, awaiting further tests results, or facing the decision of termination.

This paper presents the different ways in which Swedish parents share their screening results on anonymous online forums. Focusing on tone, questions asked, and the information and possible visuals included, it gives insight into how prenatal screening can affect the process of becoming a parent and how you emotionally prepare to welcome a child, but also how prenatal screening reenforces ideas about normalcy.