| dc.description.abstract | Departing from conventional social science approaches to pregnancy and the pregnant
woman’s body this study examines pregnancy as experience", a socially constructed state of
being where attitudes about sexuality and maternity conflict. The study is based on a review of
feminist and social science literature on pregnancy, the body and body image, as well as indepth
interviews with a group of pregnant women and their male partners. Using a qualitative research
design, a set of two interviews was conducted with twenty-eight female participants and their
male partners, during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. The interviews explored the
themes the body as a social construction, pregnancy as a socially constructed experience;
pregnancy as a liminal stage, and sexuality versus motherhood, as well as responses to a series
of images of pregnancy and pregnant women drawn from recent popular women’s magazines.
Drawing on Smith’s concept of ‘experience’ from the standpoint of the everyday world, it
is argued that the media image of the pregnant woman as the realization of motherhood and a
symbol of femininity is not an adequate reflection of women’s own experiences of pregnancy. In
contrast, pregnancy is often experienced as a liminal phase - a state in which the pregnant
woman may find herself stigmatized as she becomes identified with obesity and the ‘sick role’.
As the embodiment of what it is to be a woman, the essence of pregnancy as socially perceived
lies neither in its sexuality nor in its maternity but in its femininity. This study explores in what
ways this is reflected in and amplified by societal and cultural sanctions to which pregnant
women find themselves exposed during pregnancy. | |
