Miracles and home births: the importance of media representations of birth

Reality Pregnancy and the Online Recolonization of the Female Body

“…While reality TV has been a booming area for research, fewer studies have evaluated the value of birth narratives on reality [9,11,12,25,26,29,40]. Correlations between teen pregnancy and viewership have been examined.…”

“…Themes that were identified in reality pregnancy align with the medical model of birth. As seen in Morris and McInerney [29], Luce [25], and Cummins [9], women look to reality prenancy for education, and the themes maintaining a reliance on the medicalization of the birth journey have impacted a lack of choice and agency and may also have contributed to the high maternal morbidity rate in the US [9]. Prior to the 20th century, midwives were the primary providers of childbirth in the US.…”

“…Along with fear and danger, these narratives construct the medical model of birth. In contrast, the social model of birth acknowledges that birth is a varied process and that women should be free agents to determine their delivery position, setting, and coping strategies that work best for their own bodies [9]. These models denote different focuses and priorities.…”

“…For most women who do not get to experience a live birth before their own pregnancy, many pregnant people turn to reality tv and vlogs for information about the labor, birth, and pregnancy process [15,25,29,31]. This study examines the characteristics of social media engagement [28,43], imagemaking [7], and the medical model of birth, labor, and delivery [9] as an act of recolonization as reality pregnancy.…”

“How Any Woman Does What They Do Is Beyond Comprehension”: Media Representations of Meghan Markle’s Maternity

“…My Birth by Carmen Winant, And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O'Connell), while television shows such as One Born Every Minute (UK), 7 A Baby Story (US), and Parenthood (US) contribute to making birth more publicly visible. Nevertheless, childbirth remains a largely invisible and even tabooed experience (Cummins, 2019). Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram censor images of childbirth, and stories of birth continue notably to be rare in public discourse, being shared mainly in private, and almost exclusively in women-only conversations (De Benedictis, 2016;Weisman, 2018, April 18).…”