Social discourses about maternity in childbirth

Abstract

In recent decades, new social discourses about motherhood have appeared, which show that there is no shared speech that homogenizes reality into a single truth. In this article, we identify and describe several core themesthat conform notable elements in the social discourses of maternityaround labor (the process of birth) and delivery (the birth itself) in our society; based on qualitative fieldwork, in-depth interviews mainly with women who had been mothers, midwives and other experts in the field of research. Through an analysis of the information gathered, we have explored the new social discourses, with a special interest in the meanings that women attribute to their own experience as mothers, the reconciliation of work, family and personal life, the social practices around their maternity, their opinion on the obstetric health system, their perception of the pain of childbirth and their ideal of childbirth.