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Unassisted childbirth, also known as “freebirth,” is when a person intentionally gives birth at home with no professional birth attendant. The limited research on unassisted birth in the United States focuses on women’s reasons for making this choice. Studies suggest women are committed to birthing without a professional and that this choice is rooted in religious or natural-family belief systems. These studies do not adequately account for the ways a framework of “choice” obscures the role structural barriers play in decision-making processes. International research on unassisted childbirth finds that it is not always a first choice and may be a last resort for women who have had negative experiences with maternity care. More research on unassisted birth in the United States is needed to better understand if people face similar structural barriers. In this paper I examine how structural limitations of the US healthcare system intersect with values in decision-making processes about childbirth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nine women who gave birth unassisted in the United States, I examine the women’s shared ideological commitments, negative experiences with health care, and barriers faced seeking care. I discovered that unassisted birth may not be a first, or even positive choice, but rather a compromise informed by ideological commitments and constrained choices. Structural barriers in the US healthcare system prevented women from having a professional birth attendant who they felt was acceptable, available, and accessible. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for debates about birth justice and health policy.

This paper aims to understand the maternal health vulnerabilities of migrant women in slums and explore their challenges during and after childbirth.

The study used a qualitative approach, including in-depth interviews through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was used for analysing data. The consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative studies (COREQ)-32 items were followed for reporting this study.

The study found that migrant women were highly susceptible to adverse birthing outcomes due to risks involved in birthing, lack of care and hygiene, lack of skilled care in dealing with complicated pregnancies and exposure to domestic and obstetric violence.

The study intends to highlight the narratives of female migrants’ birthing and maternal health challenges. The entire process of childbirth in slums with consequences can result in maternal and infant morbidities and mortalities.

This chapter is concerned with the varied legitimizing discourses used by midwives to frame their identities in relation to their work. This sociological issue is particularly important in the context of an occupation, such as this one, that exists at the border of competing service claims. Drawing on 26 in-depth interviews, I use narrative analysis to examine the stories that midwives tell about their work. Through these women’s work narratives, I show the complex intersection of narrative, culture, institution, and biography (Chase, 1995, 2001; DeVault, 1999).

It is January 2017, and Nikki Tyler, market access advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development's Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact, must recommend an actionable strategy for how to use the $10 million contributed by global donors and foundations to scale up the use of chlorhexidine in Nigeria. It was clear that chlorhexidine, a substance applied to newborns' umbilical cord stumps to prevent infection, could reduce infant mortality significantly. However, changing behavior would be an enormous challenge. This case gives students an appreciation for the importance and complexity of global health issues, along with an understanding of key analytic techniques for approaching a complex market situation. Students quickly learn that there are no easy answers to encouraging chlorhexidine's greater use. To develop a plan, it is essential to complete detailed analyses, study insights and motivations, and ultimately compare different possible solutions, considering efficiency and efficacy.

This article describes two approaches to obtaining the views of users of health services: the self‐completion questionnaire and the focus group. The theoretical framework of each method will be given along with implications for their use in clinical audit. Practical examples of both are provided, in relation to the work of a district general hospital. The advantages and disadvantages of questionnaires and focus groups are set out as well as some suggested steps for the successful application of the two methods. In conclusion, it is argued that when used together, focus groups and questionnaires complement one another and allow users' views to be heard within the audit process.

This paper's aim is to describe the health experiences of a recently arrived group of refugees, the Karen from Burma, in an American midwestern city.

Four focus groups were conducted in their native language with 40 Karen refugees: one group of ten Sgaw Karen speaking men and one of women, one of East Pwo Karen speaking men and one of women. The focus groups and two additional individual interviews were coded using NVivo‐9.

The findings emphasize the significant communication barriers experienced by the Karen. The data provide rich insights into the struggles being experienced by these new Americans in their own words and highlight some of their differences from previous Asian refugees.

These data are derived from focus groups with refugees in one city in the USA with few available demographic details. Their experiences and observations may not apply to other Burmese refugee groups in other cities and countries.

The data emphasize the complexity of language of this group of Burmese refugees which acts as a significant barrier to accessing health care. Poor or improper interpretation has increased obstacles. Data indicate that many struggle with simple health care tasks that are likely taken for granted by most providers. There appears to be more alcohol and tobacco usage amongst both genders than in other recently arrived Asian groups.

This is original research, which supplements a prior chart review and overview paper by the first author and supplements the otherwise scant literature on this group outside Asia.

The technological innovations in the field of human reproduction which have been advancing at a dizzying pace, especially in Israel, have posed complex ethical dilemmas for social workers and social scientists. Do these developments, particularly in vitro fertilisation, offer a feasible solution for infertile couples or are they at the same time creating difficult, intricate problems whose outcome has yet to be clarified? Is it not paradoxical that attempts to “assist” nature by artificial means have led to such results as the birth of a child to a 60‐year‐old woman from eggs donated by another woman?

The purpose of this paper is to formulate a conceptually and empirically grounded new understanding of childcare arrangements for cross-national and longitudinal micro-level empirical research by drawing on theoretical discussions about the social, spatial and temporal dimensions of embodied childcare and empirical data in the form of parental narratives from a Romanian qualitative study.

The paper builds on a critique of an extensive body of empirical literature on the micro-level organisation of childcare and the thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with Romanian parents. The paper combines a critical literature review with findings from a qualitative study on childcare.

The paper formulates a new understanding of household-level childcare arrangements that is context-insensitive, yet reflects the social, spatial and temporal concerns that the organisation of embodied childcare often raises. The paper expands on six real-life care arrangements in Romanian households represented as different combinations of care encounters.

As the paper draws on parental narratives from a single country, Romania, the mapping of childcare arrangements in other jurisdictions and/or at different times would strengthen the case for the proposed understanding of care arrangements as a valuable tool to represent, compareand contrast household-level care routines.

The idea that parents (especially mothers) make work-care decisions in the light of what is best for their child has been widely documented. However, taxonomies of care arrangements have failed to reflect this. The proposed conceptualisation of childcare arrangements addresses this issue by articulating a conceptually coherent approach to developing empirically grounded childcare typologies that “travel well” cross-nationally and over time.