 Calls to a home birth helpline: Empowerment in childbirthRebecca Shaw and Celia Kitzinger Social Science & Medicine, 2005, vol. 61, issue 11, 2374-2383 Abstract: In the UK a woman has the right to decide to give birth at home, irrespective of whether she is expecting her first or a subsequent child and of any perceived 'risk' factors. However, the rate of home births in the UK is very low (around 2%), varies widely across the country and many women do not know how to arrange midwifery cover. The Home Birth helpline is a UK-based voluntary organisation offering support and information for women planning a home birth. In order to gain direct access to the issues that are of concern to women when planning a home birth, 80 calls to the helpline were recorded. The aims of this paper are to document the problems that callers to this helpline report having when trying to arrange home births and to explore the strategies the call-taker uses in helping women to exercise their right to birth at home. The paper concludes that women are not easily able to exercise their right to choose the place of birth and suggests a number of recommendations for action. Keywords: UK; Childbirth; Empowerment; Helpline; Home; birth (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:61:y:2005:i:11:p:2374-2383 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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