Antropologicheskij forum, 2018, no. 37

MOTHER-TO-BE AS A FIELD RESEARCHER: THE STRATEGIES OF PRIVATE OBSTETRICS PROVISION IN URBAN RUSSIA

Anna Temkina
European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
temkina()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: In this article I discuss practices of urban middle class women who pay for childbirth in maternity hospitals. I use the metaphor of “research project” in order to understand how mothers-to-be implement and justify their choice. Making consumerist choice, women conduct “research” in the field of maternity care which has some similarities with the procedures of а sociological project. Women formulate goals, collect and analyze data, and construct а “grounded theory” of “good health care”. They conceptualize the quality of maternity care’s system and define whom they could trust in this system. These are the practices of educated urban middle class in Russia who incorporate “good intensive motherhood” in their lifestyle and gender identity. In line with the description of intensive motherhood, young women try to control childbirth investing economic, cognitive and affective resources. Using multiple resources women try to disenchant the medical system, identifying those institutions and actors (obstetricians and midwives) who could provide them with “good care”. However, when a choice is made on the basis of detailed “research”, mothers-to-be delegate control to professionals, and by this prove their identity as a good responsible mothers.

Keywords: mother-to-be, childbirth, trust, fee-for service medical care, Russia, doctors — patients, professionalism, control.

To cite: Temkina A., ‘Budushchaya mat kak issledovatel: strategii organizatsii platnykh rodov v rossiyskom krupnom gorode’ [Mother-to-Be as a Field Researcher: The Strategies of Private Obstetrics Provision in Urban Russia], Antropologicheskij forum, 2018, no. 37, pp. 198–230.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2018-14-37-198-230

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/037/temkina.pdf