In response to the growing desires of American women to reclaim childbirth from the pathologized and technocratic grips of Western medicine, the social media based organization, Birth Without Fear, provides positive birth messages and empowers followers by sharing linguistically positive birth stories and affirmations of childbirth empowerment. A cyber-ethnographic examination of the comments section on 62 blog posts, published by Birth Without Fear between February 1st, 2015 and February 12th, 2016, revealed discourses of self-efficacy, empowerment, and agency that may help reduce childbirth fear, anxiety, and self-inefficacy. Birth Without Fear simultaneously acts as a form of childbirth education intended to empower women to birth fearlessly and also as a safe and supportive kinship cyber network where women can freely exchange, share, process, and make meaning of their birth experiences. Overall, themes of childbirth empowerment, affirmation, and support suggest that positive, empowering birth discourses may help socialize American women to birth fearlessly, embody self-efficacy, agency and empowerment during birth, and have more positive birth experiences overall.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03282016-053039 |
| Date | 04 April 2016 |
| Creators | Buccino, Juliana Hathaway |
| Contributors | Tara McKay, Dominique Béhague |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03282016-053039/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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