abstract
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This dissertation investigates the socially and physically embodied experience of pregnancy. Analyzing qualitative interviews with 42 culturally diverse women of different ages and social classes, I explore the meaning women attach to pregnancy and its impact on their relationship with others.
Theoretically, this research is grounded in the intersection of the sociology of the body and the sociology of pregnancy and childbirth. Focusing on women's embodiment of pregnancy I reinstate the importance ofthe physical component of pregnancy within the literature on pregnancy and childbirth, which predominately deals with social pregnancy rendering the physical body an "absent presence". At the same time, I seek to reiterate the importance of social interactions in the field of sociology of the body which, concentrating on physical body, often neglects the social meanings attached to physiological transformation. I contribute to both fields of study demonstrating that treating physical as real is as wrong as analyzing social experiences of pregnancy without mentioning physical bodies.
My major argument is that the meaning that pregnant women and people around them attach to pregnancy is constantly re-negotiated in social interactions. I claim that despite the physiological transformation that women undergo during pregnancy, the pregnant body is not socially pregnant until it is defined as such during interactions with others.
Situating women's experiences in the context of North American medicalized culture of pregnancy, this dissertation also examines how women's journey to motherhood is shaped by their social context and what effect the medicalization of pregnancy have on women's embodiment of motherhood.
I conclude this dissertation exploring the role of social context in shaping the embodied experiences of pregnancy and reflecting on the dynamics of social and physical in the study of pregnancy and transformations of corporeal yet socially positioned bodies.