Bodies of risk: Constructing motherhood in a Mexican public hospital

Abstract

This article addresses the connection between risk and motherhood at an urban obstetrics hospital in Mexico. It primarily aims to explore the ways that clinicians define risk as well as how they conflate risk with bad motherhood. It discusses how clinicians' perceptions of their patients' social lives shape their interactions and decisions about the women's health. The study was based on interviews and participant observation in June 2008 and June–July 2011 with 71 obstetrical patients, 30 physicians, 9 nurses, and 12 midwives in the city of Puebla. Results show that birth itself was defined as a risky event, clinicians conflated social factors with biological factors in their management of risk, and the patients were a priori classified as bad mothers. This article proposes a reproductive habitus to explain the connection between health institutions, class, responsibility, blame, and clinical decision-making to analyze how risk is managed and blame enacted upon women's bodies.