Childbirth as a consumption object. From obstetric violence to the offer of new childbirth care models in Santiago, Chile

Abstract

Childbirth in Chile has had great historical, political, and economic changes. This article analyzes childbirth as a socio-economical process, based on two social science investigations: a sociological one that produces a literature review of Chilean consumption; and a anthropological one, based on interviews to obstetric staff in Santiago, Chile. The reflections we propose with this interdisciplinary work address how childbirth in Santiago de Chile goes from being a process managed by the community and then professionalized in the 20th century, to become today as an object of consumption, offered mainly by private institutions. From new models of obstetric care, we will see that within a neoliberal culture, that the production of a childbirth-object with seductive characteristics, promises improvements, both in the experience of women (previously mistreated) and in their newborns or -as we call them- optimized babies. As long as they can pay for it. The mixture of these two investigations proposes to pay attention to the exchange that the institutions are advertising, which offer differentiated methods of childbirth care, taking social demands against obstetric violence to package them into programs that seem to improve the human product and the mother’s experience. The question within the experimentation of these deliveries remains open and we extend the invite to investigate such possibilities.