Hunter Cheryl
University of North Dakota, Educational Foundations and Research, Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA.
Anthropol Med. 2012;19(3):315-26. doi: 10.1080/13648470.2012.692358. Epub 2012 Aug 8.
Childbirth in the American context is only peripherally conceptualized in the domain of the family and home, demonstrating the primacy of the biomedical model of childbirth in the institutional setting of the hospital. Medical research has found positive outcomes when women labor with 'doulas', paraprofessionals who are trained and experienced in childbirth. However, medical research has yet to explore the complexity of the labor experience of women with doulas, offering potential insights into how those positive outcomes may come about. Doulas define what they do in birth as 'holding the space'. This research explored what 'holding the space' meant in terms of the experience of childbirth with women who employed doulas. The findings suggest that doulas' conceptualizations of the space of birth were framed in terms of creating/maintaining intimacy and that doulas and women maintained this intimate space even within the institutionalized medical-clinical birth experience. Implications of this research do not point to the generalization of doula attributes for implementation on an institutional level, but rather validate the contributions of external caregivers to producing positive outcomes.
在美国背景下,分娩在家庭和家庭领域只是被边缘化地概念化,这表明在医院的机构环境中生物医学分娩模式的首要地位。医学研究发现,当女性在分娩时有“导乐”陪伴时会有积极的结果,导乐是在分娩方面受过培训且有经验的辅助专业人员。然而,医学研究尚未探索有导乐陪伴的女性分娩经历的复杂性,这为这些积极结果是如何产生的提供了潜在的见解。导乐将她们在分娩时所做的事情定义为“营造空间”。这项研究探讨了对于使用导乐的女性来说,“营造空间”在分娩经历方面意味着什么。研究结果表明,导乐对分娩空间的概念化是围绕创造/维持亲密感构建的,并且导乐和女性即使在制度化的医学临床分娩经历中也维持着这种亲密空间。这项研究的意义并非指向将导乐的特质推广到机构层面实施,而是验证外部护理人员对产生积极结果的贡献。