Prenatal screening provides a good illustration of the tensions existing between the intention of control associated with standard risk surveillance and the permanence of uncertainty around life processes. During the screening process, health professionals and pregnant women are not only confronted with the limitations of probabilistic thinking, they are also concretely reminded of the extent of uncertain outcomes. We analysed such tensions, emblematic of the notion of manufactured uncertainty (Giddens 1994), with qualitative data collected in Switzerland from both gynaecologists and mothers-to-be. Doctors experienced difficulties in regards to expectations raised by risk surveillance, the duty to inform and the anxiety surveillance induced. Pregnant women coped in different ways with probabilistic thinking, developing contrasting responses to uncertainty, ranging from scepticism about risk thinking to aspiration for control leading to over use of medical procedures. As uncertainty was central to professional and lay thinking both made use of subjective interpretations and cultural meanings in decisions related to future events

Introduction and AimsMost official healthcare guidelines apply the precautionary principle by recommending that pregnant women abstain from any alcohol consumption. However, a number of women continue drinking alcohol while pregnant. The aim of this study was to investigate couples′ experiences of the issue of alcohol consumption during pregnancy as a transitional process.Design and MethodsThirty semi‐directive joint interviews were conducted with couples expecting their first child in Switzerland. Interviews were analysed thematically with the help of ATLAS.ti.ResultsCouples endorsed the imperative of changing drinking habits and all the women reduced their alcohol consumption, although some reported difficulties. First, we identified three themes describing how couples experienced the woman′s change of drinking habits as a smooth transition: Internalisation of risk discourses, abstinence as a social norm and embodiment of alcohol aversion. Second, we emphasised four kinds of difficulties that couples encountered in their everyday lives: burden of risk discourses, conflicting advice, social occasions and desire for alcohol.Discussion and ConclusionsThis paper makes a significant contribution by examining prenatal drinking change as a transition. In this conceptualisation, the change of alcohol consumption is a relational process that is shaped by multiple changes and social norms. Our findings have important implications for practice. First, health professionals should be aware of the difficulties women experience when they abstain from alcohol during pregnancy. Second, our findings suggest the importance of a patient‐centred approach that considers the role of the partner in supporting a pregnant woman′s change of alcohol consumption.

In highly industrialised societies, risk shapes representations and practices surrounding childbirth. However, few studies examine the impact of the transnational diffusion of risk in medium and low income societies, where, despite the adoption of biomedical protocols on an institutional level, women and birth attendants often seem to follow different rationales in their practices. In this article, we are interested in the various components of the notion of risk, which shall be understood and examined in relation to specific socioeconomic , political and cultural configurations. Drawing on two ethnographic studies conducted, respectively, in a Swiss university hospital and in three Jordanian government hospitals, we investigate how surveillance and medical interventions are deployed in pregnancy and childbirth in unequally structured health systems and describe negotiations and appropriations surrounding this management. These two contrasting cultural, socioeconomic and health 'system' contexts reveal important differences in the way birth attendants and women consider the notion of risk in childbirth in that it is seldom present in clinicians' and women's discourses and practices in Jordan, whereas it plays a pertinent role in Switzerland. We argue that the heterogeneous configurations of risk mobilised by the participants in these studies reveal that dissimilar histories in terms of medical institutions and health care service provisions, political regimes, economic conditions, and social configurations shape the cultural and techno-medical arrangements of the institutions we studied. Comparing our Jordanian and Swiss ethnographies, we show that the mobilisation of biomedical risk does not happen in a vacuum but rather intertwines with specific social arrangements, eliciting resistance and adaptation that fashion the discourses and behaviours of birth attendants and pregnant women.

Est-ce si important [de boire] alors que tout le reste est contraignant ? ». Nina, l'une des femmes que nous avons interviewées à propos de leur consommation d'alcool pendant l'allaitement, invite à prêter attention aux circonstances qui les font s'interroger sur leur existence : boire de l'alcool est-il conciliable avec l'allaitement ? En d'autres termes, à quoi tiennent ces femmes et de quoi dépendent-elles pour élaborer en situation des « options vivantes » (James, [1897] 2005), pouvant être tenues en pratique ? Comment les expériences de (non)consommation d'alcool participent-elles à faire advenir les mères et à « produire le genre » (West et Zimmerman, 2009) ?Si les expériences de la consommation occasionnelle d'alcool pendant la grossesse ont été documentées (Hammer et Inglin, 2014 ;Holland, McCallum et Walton, 2016 ; Gouilhers et al., 2019), peu de travaux se sont intéressés à la période de l'allaitement. En mobilisant une approche pragmatique et féministe, nous proposons de prendre au sérieux les récits des expériences que les femmes (f)ont de l'alcool et leur réflexivité pratique pour élaborer des options rendues nécessaires par l'allaitement. Enquêter sur des « options vivantes » : une approche pragmatique et féministeDe nombreux travaux mettent en exergue que la consommation d'alcool tend à être davantage régulée pour les femmes que pour les hommes (Palierne, Gaussot et Le Minor, 2015), a fortiori lorsqu'elles ont des enfants (Fox, Heffernan et Nicolson, 2009). Plusieurs recherches consacrées aux usages d'alcool ou de drogues ont ainsi souligné l'importance de la transition à la maternité dans la constitution des inégalités de genre (Measham, 2002 ;Lyons et Willott, 2008 ;Waitt et Clement, 2016), sans pour autant examiner de près les récits d'expériences des mères. Notre enquête vise ainsi à compléter ces analyses en nous centrant sur l'allaitement.La capacité des messages de santé publique à façonner l'expérience de la maternité a été amplement mise en évidence dans la littérature. Pendant la grossesse ou l'allaitement, les femmes sont incitées, entre autres prescriptions, à renoncer à certains aliments, à arrêter de fumer et à s'abstenir d'alcool, suivant un principe de précaution (Lupton, 2012 ;Hammer et Burton-Jeangros, 2013). En Suisse, différentes organisations professionnelles présentent Manuscrit auteur.rice. Pour citer l'article : Solène Gouilhers, Irina Radu, Raphaël Hammer, Yvonne Meyer et Jessica Pehlke-Milde, 2021. « Quand la (non)consommation d'alcool fait le genre : une enquête sur les récits d'expériences de mères allaitantes », Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 40 (1), 52-66.