'Childbirth is not a car rental': mothers and obstetricians negotiating consumer service in Russian commercial maternity care

This article explores how commercialization of maternity care in Russia offers new opportunities and imposes new limitations on both mothers-to-be and doctors. The research is based on 35 in-depth interviews with patients and 24 with professionals in paid maternity car in St. Petersburg (2015-2017)....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCritical public health Vol. 30; no. 5; pp. 521 - 532
Main Author Temkina, Anna
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Taylor & Francis 19.10.2020
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Births
Childbirth & labor
Commercialization
Consumers
consumption
Economic conditions
health
Health care
Health services
Maternal child nursing
Mothers
Obstetricians
Physicians
Professional women
Socialism
Trade
Womens health
Working conditions
Working women
Russia
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Summary:This article explores how commercialization of maternity care in Russia offers new opportunities and imposes new limitations on both mothers-to-be and doctors. The research is based on 35 in-depth interviews with patients and 24 with professionals in paid maternity car in St. Petersburg (2015-2017). It is a significant and illustrative case within the broader trends in the Russian health care system of the 2000s-2010s. This article's contribution is an understanding of maternity care's post-socialism market development from the perspective of women: mothers-to-be and mostly female doctors. The ongoing reforms and organization of paid maternity care in Russia are analyzed. I explore the position of mothers-to-be as consumers with growing demands, and of professional women as they respond to such demands. I depict how doctors, though improving their economic and working conditions, resist the symbolic decline of their status and seek to restore their power, and how mothers-to-be accept doctors' authoritative role in highly medicalized maternity care.
ISSN:0958-1596
1469-3682
DOI:10.1080/09581596.2019.1626004