Abstract
Background Overwhelmingly, women in Middle Eastern countries experience birth as dehumanising and disrespectful. Aim To examine Jordanian women’s experiences and constructions of labour and birth in different settings (home, public and private hospitals in Jordan, and Australian public hospitals), over time and across generations. Method A qualitative interpretive design was used. Data were collected by face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 27 Jordanian women. Of these women, 20 were living in Jordan (12 had given birth in the last five years and eight had birthed over 15 years ago) while seven were living in Australia (with birthing experience in both Jordan and Australia). Interview data were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Results Women’s birth experiences differed across settings and generations and were represented in the four themes: ‘Home birth: a place of comfort’; ‘Public Hospital: it’s what you do’; ‘Private Hospital: buying control’ and ‘Australian maternity care: a mixed experience’. In each theme, the concepts: Pain, Privacy, the Personal and to a lesser extent, Purity, were present but experienced in different ways depending on the setting (home, public or private hospital) and the country. Conclusions The findings demonstrate how meanings attributed to labour and birth, particularly the experience of pain, are produced and reproduced in different settings, providing insights not only into the medical and institutional management of birth, but also the social context influencing decision-making around birth in Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries. In the public hospital environment in Jordan, women were treated in a dehumanised way with no privacy, no support for people and no access to the pain relief they wanted. This was in stark contrast to women birthing at home only one generation before. Change is urgently needed to offer humanised birth in the Jordanian maternity system,
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