Televising childbirth: understanding media impacts on perceptions of risk, women’s choices and health

This project will begin to investigate the relationship between televising childbirth and women’s experiences of labour and birth. Midwives and other healthcare professionals debate the risks of televising childbirth, arguing that it may increase fear of birth, but this debate is happening in isolation from media/television studies that could provide methodological insights. Television scholars have identified normative representations of birth but struggled to link these with impacts on women’s experiences and health.

This Seed Award will bring together cultural and television studies, midwifery, health humanities, industry and service-user perspectives to develop an innovative, theoretically-informed approach to study childbirth on television and its implications for women’s experiences of risk, choice and autonomy during pregnancy and birth.