Situated Subjects: Cultural-Historical Contextualisation of Transition into Motherhood

This chapter focuses on the sociocultural mediation of the early transition to motherhood—the prevailing discursive and normative frameworks that shape women’s representations, behaviours and choices. There has been a radical shift from earlier sociocultural representations of pregnancy and childbirth to a dominant articulation of these processes as biological, which has led to them becoming the objects of medical knowledge, practices and technologies. Various aspects of this relatively new historical situation, as well as the alternative approach that have emerged as a critical response to it, are critically examined in this chapter. It illustrates how the medical and natural models of pregnancy and childbirth, situated within the broader neoliberal sociocultural landscape, intertwine in concrete practices and experiences and how women navigate the various, sometimes contradictory, representations and norms during this peculiar life phase.