Women at Risk
This chapter moves on from the case study material for the four women presented in Chapter 8 and the quantitative findings relating to pregnancy ‘outcome’ discussed in Chapter 9 to attempt a synthesis of how all the women in the study regarded their participation in it. A critical focus of this part of the analysis is the notion of risk. The women who took part in the Social Support and Pregnancy Outcome study were not only exposed to the ‘risk’ of taking part in research, they had been identified as ‘at risk’ in the narrowly biological sense of having already given birth to at least one baby weighing less than 2500 g. In using a quantifiable measure of risk derived from the medical domain, the study thus participated in a particular conceptualization of women and motherhood — one which prioritizes a set of meanings attached to motherhood by people other than mothers themselves.