Seeing the Baby, Doing Family: Commercial Ultrasound as Family Practice?

Abstract

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP URL' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.uk 1 Seeing the baby, doing family: commercial ultrasound as family practice?ABSTRACT Medical sociologists and anthropologists have studied the social significance of obstetric ultrasound for families but little is known about how women and families make use of commercially available ultrasound scans. This article draws on interviews with women who booked a scan with a commercial company in the UK. For some women, commercial ultrasound can be understood as a family practice. We investigate this theme by examining who accompanies women to commercial scan appointments, how scan images are shared and how sonograms are used as prompts to resemblance talk. We argue that commercial scans are more than an additional opportunity to acquire 'baby's first picture' and offer a flexible resource to do family, creating and affirming family relationships and rehearsing roles as parents, siblings and grandparents. Our findings confirm the importance of imagination in doing family and raise questions about the role of technology and commercial interests in shaping family practices.

Ultrasound as a technology of reassurance? How pregnant women and health care professionals articulate ultrasound reassurance and its limitations

“…For more information on methodology and data analysis for both studies, see (Roberts et al . , ; Thomas ).…”

“…Ethical approval was granted by NHS and university research ethics committees for both studies. For more information on methodology and data analysis for both studies, see (Roberts et al 2015a(Roberts et al , 2015bThomas 2017).…”

“…Ultrasonography has become a key tool in the medical surveillance and management of pregnancy in the UK. Researchers have explored the social, cultural, and political implications of ultrasound and how the coupling of human and machine changes the relationship between expectant parents, particularly mothers, and the foetus (Mitchell 2001, Mitchell and Georges 1997, Roberts 2012a, 2012b, Roberts et al 2015a, 2015b, Sandelowski 1994, Taylor 1998, Thomas 2015, 2017. Ultrasound has a number of clinical uses in prenatal care as well as 'psychological benefits' (Taylor 2008), with reassurance being widely recognised as one such benefit.…”

‘I didn't want to pass that on to my child, being afraid to go to the dentist': making sense of oral health through narratives of connectedness over the life course

“…Smart's ‘connectedness thesis' (2007: 189) has been used to explore family experiences of living with life‐threatening illness (Ellis ), narratives of household work practices (Kettle ) and family use of commercial ultrasound (Roberts et al . ). These authors have shown how the concepts of memory, biography, embeddedness, relationism and the imaginary (Smart ) can be used to theorise how family is created through social action.…”

“…Building on this, we follow Smart who argues for a greater focus on thinking, feeling and imagining, the interior processes that are entwined with the practices that constitute family (and the non-familial relationships that are part of our personal lives). 1 Smart's 'connectedness thesis' (2007: 189) has been used to explore family experiences of living with life-threatening illness (Ellis 2013), narratives of household work practices (Kettle 2016) and family use of commercial ultrasound (Roberts et al 2017). These authors have shown how the concepts of memory, biography, embeddedness, relationism and the imaginary (Smart 2007) can be used to theorise how family is created through social action.…”