No Perfect Birth: Trauma and Obstetric Care in the Rural United States

(Hardback)

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In No Perfect Birth: Trauma and Obstetric Care in the Rural United States, Kristin Haltinner examines the institutional and ideological forces that cause harm to women in childbirth in the rural United States. Interweaving the poignant and tragic stories of mothers with existing research on obstetric care and social theories, Haltinner points to how medical staffs lack of time, mothers need to navigate and traverse complex spaces, and practitioners reliance on well-trodden obstetric routines cause unnecessary and lasting harm for women in childbirth. Additionally, Haltinner offers suggestions towards improving current practices, incorporating case models from other countries as well as mothers embodied knowledge.

Reviews

Kristin Haltinners book provides a salient analysis of the institutional and ideological practices that routinely traumatize birthing people in the United States. Her work not only illustrates how capitalism intersects with patriarchy, classism, and racism within medical institutions, but also, most importantly, gives us the tools we need to understand and intervene on the actions and beliefs that lead to obstetric violence. By centering womens voices and experiences, this book provides us with discursive and tangible ways to improve care for birthing people in the U.S. This book is an urgent and timely intervention that can be used to help improve birth experiences and outcomes.

In her detailed account of birth trauma, Haltinner underscores the structures that put mothers, and sometimes even their doctors, in systems that hurt women's bodies, minds, and souls. Focusing on rural communities, this book is grounded in a sophisticated theoretical framework that pushes us to situate birth trauma within a political, economic, and gendered social structure. A profoundly insightful examination of birth that centers women, their experiences, and voices while laying bare the impact traumatic birth leaves, this is a powerfully written and totally heartbreaking book.

Author Bio

Kristin Haltinner is associate professor of sociology at the University of Idaho.