The meaning of home : spirituality and domestic space in Australian home birth experiences

Abstract

The home and the hospital have become polarised sites in the discourse on childbirth. The hospital has been heavily critiqued as a site of childbirth since the 1960s, and scholars have interrogated the hospital within a broader framework of medicalisation. Oakley (1984), Kitzinger (2005), Reiger (2000) and Davis-Floyd (2003) have been particularly critical of the increasing medicalisation of childbirth, and argue for the importance of childbirth knowledge beyond the technology-fuelled medical institution. Research on homebirth has in many ways echoed the medicalisation thesis, with a focus on the ways home birthing women attempt to gain autonomy over their bodies by birthing outside of the medical system. What is missing in this critique, however, is an analysis of the space home-birthing women have chosen in their pursuit of autonomy - the home. This thesis draws on interviews with 58 Australian home birthing women, doulas and independent midwives from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Via a series of publications, I argue that during the bounded time-span of pregnancy and childbirth, these women renegotiate the meanings and relationships with their home environments, infusing them with the spiritual dimensions of pregnancy and childbirth. This is facilitated by the social nature of natural birth (Mansfield, 2008) and the perception of women's 'innate knowledge' of how to birth naturally. As a result of the biological and gendered experiences of spirituality (King, 1995; Rose, 2001; Sointu & Woodhead, 2008), home birthing women create rituals like the 'Blessingway' (an alternative baby-shower), and ceremonies that memorialise the placenta as well as the birth itself, generating an albeit temporary, but nonetheless sacred home-space. The sacred home-space is reinforced by what I term the 'nostalgic imagination' of natural childbirth. Drawing on an imaginary mythology of birth and the connections between women throughout history, home birthing women are able to draw on an authoritative spiritual alternative to medical discourse.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English