 Are Brazilian women really choosing to deliver by cesarean?Kristine Hopkins Social Science & Medicine, 2000, vol. 51, issue 5, 725-740 Abstract: Brazil has among the highest cesarean section rates in the world, with 36% of women in the country delivering surgically. Women, especially those who deliver in private hospitals with cesarean rates in the 80-90% range, are often portrayed as actively choosing to deliver surgically. Doctors typically promote this view, also common in the popular understanding of the phenomenon, that it is women's demand for a cesarean that is behind the high rates. Academic analyses tend to present a more balanced view with doctors' motives for wanting to perform cesareans included alongside descriptions of women's motives for the procedures. What is typically missing from such analyses is a discussion of the power differences between women and doctors. Doctors clearly have more decision-making power in the hospital birthing situation, and their medical expertise and authority is often marshaled to convince a woman to "choose" a cesarean. Using data collected from a postpartum survey, participant observation in hospital obstetrics wards, and in-depth interviews, I offer evidence which refutes many of the hypotheses associated with why women might prefer to deliver by cesarean. I also show that the majority of women surveyed in two cities in Brazil, particularly first-time mothers, do not seek to deliver by cesarean. Through an analysis of conversations between doctors and women during labor and delivery, and through women's narratives of their delivery experiences, I also show some of the mechanisms that doctors use in order to induce so-called demand for surgical delivery and argue that they are very active participants in the ongoing construction of the culture of cesarean section in Brazil. Keywords: Cesarean; section; Vaginal; delivery; Doctor-patient; interactions; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:5:p:725-740 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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