Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding Maternity Care Decisions

博士论文研究：了解孕产妇护理决策

• 批准号: 1434985
• 负责人: Mary Nell Trautner
• 金额: $ 0.85万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1434985&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Understanding; Maternity

Medical sociology research suggests that over the past century women's decisions about maternity care and birth have become highly constrained by medical technology and medical authority. Concurrently, various social movements, including the natural childbirth movement and health consumerism, have made alternative birthing options more visible and available to women. Taken together, the contemporary context of childbirth provides an opportunity to examine how, and in what ways, women navigate and assign value to competing types of knowledge when making health decisions. In this dissertation project, the researcher will conduct in-depth interviews with pregnant women who have never before given birth to understand the individual level influences that shape women's attitudes about birth, specifically how, and in what ways, social relationships, race, and social class influence women's attitudes about birth and their decisions about maternity care. This project engages several areas of sociology and advances knowledge in concrete ways. First, the research builds on medical sociology literature, particularly research on medicalization, by departing from the dominant "medical versus natural" framework for understanding why women make particular maternity health decisions. Whereas many studies examine only the larger context in which decisions about birth are made, this research will elucidate how individuals' attitudes about birth are shaped, and in what ways individual-level phenomenon intersect dominant discourse about birth. Second, this project will contribute to research on social relationships by exploring the role of individuals' interactions with others in shaping healthcare decisions. Many studies examining prenatal and postnatal experiences of women focus on the role of social support for shaping health outcomes, but this project will analyze the various dynamics of social relationships including the ways in which social influence occurs and how that may matter in the context of medicalization. Finally, examining women's health care behaviors will allow enable this research to speak to sociological research on gender and family by exploring ways in which notions of femininity and good mothering impact the highly gendered experience of pregnancy and childbirth.

医学社会学研究表明，在过去的世纪，妇女对产妇护理和生育的决定受到医疗技术和医疗权威的高度限制。与此同时，各种社会运动，包括自然分娩运动和健康消费主义，使妇女更容易看到和获得替代分娩选择。总而言之，分娩的当代背景提供了一个机会，研究如何，以及以何种方式，妇女导航和分配价值的竞争类型的知识时，作出健康的决定。在本论文项目中，研究人员将对从未生育过的孕妇进行深入访谈，以了解个人层面的影响，塑造妇女对生育的态度，特别是如何，以及以何种方式，社会关系，种族和社会阶层影响妇女对生育的态度和他们对产妇护理的决定。该项目涉及社会学的几个领域，并以具体的方式推进知识。首先，研究建立在医学社会学文献，特别是医学化的研究，从占主导地位的“医疗与自然”的框架，了解为什么妇女作出特定的产妇健康决定。虽然许多研究只考察了更大的背景下，关于出生的决定，这项研究将阐明个人的态度是如何形成的，以及如何在个人层面的现象相交的主导话语出生。其次，该项目将通过探索个人与他人的互动在塑造医疗保健决策中的作用，为社会关系的研究做出贡献。许多研究检查妇女的产前和产后的经验集中在塑造健康结果的社会支持的作用，但本项目将分析社会关系的各种动态，包括社会影响发生的方式，以及在医疗化的背景下可能如何重要。最后，研究妇女的医疗保健行为将使这项研究能够通过探索女性气质和好母亲的概念影响怀孕和分娩的高度性别化的经验的方式来谈论性别和家庭的社会学研究。