Medicalization Pregnant Women

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Even though medical practices are safer and more trust-worthy in modern society, the redefinition of pregnancy and childbirth as dangerous and risky to women's health and to the health of her fetus is still a dominant ideology today. Medicalization has socialized people into perceiving pregnancy and birth as high-risk situations where pregnant women are expected to seek out professional medical advice requiring technological medical interventions and monitoring (Zardorozyj 1999).

Women are socialized to believe that pregnancy is a condition deviating from normal health and that they need to rely on medical professionals to treat such a condition reinforcing dependency (Johnson 2008). Pregnancy in modern society is treated as a medical issue …show more content…
Standards that have been set include the monitoring and regulating of activities such as eating and drinking, fetal kicks, weight gain, sleeping position, emotions, exposure to basic household products, exercise, and sexual activity (Kukla and Wayne 2011).

> “Women feel pressure, exerted by medical professionals, agencies of the state, women’s magazines and pharmaceutical marketers to monitor their diets, weight, appearance, activities, behaviors and thoughts for any signs of abnormality or illness. During pregnancy this surveillance effort is increased, as medical doctors and nurses conduct tests to ensure that mothers are complying with best medical practices and fetuses are developing normally” (Johnson 2008).

The medicalization of pregnancy is a major issue because control over pregnancy is taken out of the patients hands and put in the hands of medical practitioners. In Zardorozyj's article “Social Class, Social Selves and Social Control In Childbirth” (1999) she argues that medicalization is an alienating process that disempowers those without obstetrical training and is a process that focuses on issues of safety and not women's subjective experiences of giving
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