'But isn't it the baby that decides when it will be born?': Temporality and women's embodied experiences of giving birth

White, Jo

Abstract

Drawing on primary ethnographic research, this paper explores the intermeshing of different forms of time in contemporary childbirth, including the ways in which pregnant women are embedded within, informed by, and resist institutional categorizations of reproductive time. While each parturient who participated in my study described their own, unique relationships with birthing and time, all women employed clock-time to anchor critical phases of their labour. My analysis leads me to propose the concept of `phenomenological time´ as a means of capturing the embodied outcome of the complex, entwined relationships amongst the social and institutional time which each woman inhabits, her own individual, underlying physiology, and her ongoing psycho-social response throughout the birthing experience. My analysis suggests that further phenomenological studies of birth could lead to a more sophisticated understanding of the relationships between human beings and time including, alternative temporal forms such a multitemporality and `reverse progression´ during labour.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 22, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Mar 1, 2016
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jan 7, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 15, 2017
• Journal: The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
• Print ISSN: 0305-7674
• Publisher: Berghahn Journals
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 72-86
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2016.340108
• Keywords: the body, embodiment, maternal health services, reproduction, time, temporality, phenomenology
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/905774
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/ca.2016.340108
• Contract Date: Jun 22, 2016