The normalization of c-section as a way of birth: Material culture of birth in private hospitals in Southeastern Brazil

Abstract

The objective is to discuss the development of a material culture on labor and birth in a context of massive use of technoscientific innovations and explore the possibility of cesarean normalization as a way of being born, by analyzing reports of women who underwent cesarean in private maternity hospitals in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The surgical procedure is resubmitted as a way to be born safe, clean, organized and compatible with modern life, with intense productive work and impediments - social and biological - to reproduce the "old" ways, appearing as an event continuity, rather than exception. Other needs contribute to the material culture of cesarean section, including the management of productive and reproductive life, socio-affective dimension and consumption. Women claim for themselves the power over the choices made in the process of birth of their children. It is seen to produce a new system of norms and values, more permeable to technologies, modeling a new "natural" for delivery. In the broader context of biomedicalization of life and reproduction, caesarean delivery represents delivery and birth in society, and it is claimed as the normal way of giving birth.