The strive for normalcy in the contested space of birth

Taking a theoretical departure in the term of ’space’ fueled by Foucauldian readings of the power/knowledge nexus, this paper explores how childbirth and birth care are entangled in political, societal, and professional negotiations and contestations based on different épistémès or aprioris on what determines good birth care. The paper explores birth as a contested space by extrapolating the
last decades’ political and professional strive for keeping the birth ’normal’. In an era where medical and technological promises are believed to foster a technocratic approach to birth, the term of ’normal birth’ was originally applied as an attempt to counteract on a medicalization of birth. However, despite the
aim of promoting standards of good care, the term has not only set strict contours for care work but also created standards for what can be experienced as a normal/good birth. Moreover, labelling birth as ’normal’ as a counteract on the rise in medical interventions reveals the relevance of approaching birth
as a contested space. Through discursive analytical lenses, the paper unfolds birth care policy development in the UK and in Denmark to explore how the term of ’normal’, also replaced by terms as ’physiological’, ’spontaneous vaginal’, or ’without complications’ disclose an ongoing dichotomous and hierarchical view on care. In this dichotomous approach to care, birth care can either be legitimised within a midwifery or a medical care model, leading birth to be either pathological or normal and thus leaving little space for more nuanced understandings of actual care needs