Pregnant with meaning: An interpretive analysis of women's pregnancy talk
Abstract
This study begins to dis-cover/create a feminist discourse of pregnant subjectivity. Its ultimate goal is to offer alternatives to more dominant and potentially disempowering definitions of pregnant subjectivity by amplifying the definitions offered in the talk of pregnant persons. I interviewed twelve women who were currently pregnant or had recently been pregnant. I asked them to discuss their experiences of pregnancy, and how that related to their senses of self and relationship to others. These women's pregnancy talk was characterized by three existential conditions: corporeality, temporality, and relationality. More specifically, pregnancy was experienced as a process emerging from a uniquely intimate connection between body and time, and between pregnant body-time and partner relationship. Overall, the women's talk indicated a struggle for an understanding of pregnancy as process and all that means, rather than as merely a fetal gestation period with its focus on baby-as-product.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Rawlins, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Communication|Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology|Womens studies
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.