This book examines the way risk is defined and employed in the delivery of maternity care across the world, inviting readers to reflect critically on how the management of risk shapes the organization and experience of maternity services. Drawing from investigations of the way risk operates in contemporary society, the authors challenge taken-for-granted understandings of risk in maternity care and early parenting, showing how risk is not simply a value-free assessment of potential harms but is, in fact, a complex social and political way of seeing, knowing about, and performing pregnancy and birth. The information presented here invites the reader to rethink the social and economic risks in maternity care, challenge the assumption that responses to risk are uniform, see the political uses of risk in maternity care, and reconsider the value of risk management. Finally, the book offers a substantial and up-to-date summary of new and important theoretical understandings of risk and uncertainty in maternity care. In these pages, students and practitioners in the fields of health, medicine, midwifery, and the social sciences will find both practical information about, and deeper insights into, the social aspects of the delivery of health care.
