Abstract

Through its analysis of birth plans, documents some women create to guide their birth attendants' actions during hospital births, this article reveals the rhetorical complexity of childbirth and analyzes women's attempts to harness birth plans as tools of resistance and self-education. Asserting that technologies can both silence and give voice, the article examines women's use of technologies of writing to confront technologies of birth. The article draws on data from online childbirth narratives, a childbirth writing survey, and five women's birth plans to argue that women's silencing, or rhetorical disability, during childbirth both prompts and limits the birth plan as an effective communicative tool. The data suggest that the birth plan is not consistently effective in the ways its authors intend. Nonetheless, this analysis also demonstrates that the rhetorical failure of the birth plan can be read as, and thereby transformed into, rhetorical possibility.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2009-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088308329217
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (12)

  1. Written Communication
  2. Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  4. Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Show all 12 →
  1. Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Written Communication
  4. Written Communication
  5. Communication Design Quarterly
  6. Communication Design Quarterly
  7. Rhetoric Society Quarterly

References (37)

  1. 10.1002/14651858.CD003519
  2. Immaculate deception: A new look at women and childbirth in America
  3. Power and the profession of obstetrics
  4. 10.1515/text.1.1996.16.3.299
  5. Birth story of Brendan David Hoover
Show all 37 →
  1. The logic of practice (R. Nice
  2. Husband-coached childbirth
  3. Husband-coached childbirth
  4. Husband-coached childbirth
  5. 10.1017/CBO9780511813085
  6. Brysk, J. (2005).
  7. Personal interview
  8. Cartwright, E. (1998). Electronic fetal monitoring and biomedically constructed birth. In R. Davis-Floyd & J.…
  9. Gender and language: Towards a feminist pragmatics
  10. Birth planning
  11. Birth stories: Mystery, power, and creation
  12. 10.1056/NEJMp068290
  13. The history of sexuality (Vol. 1, 1st American ed.)
  14. Pew Internet and American Life Project: Online Life Report
  15. Obstetric myths versus research realities: a guide to medical literature
  16. A woman in residence
  17. Hawisher, G.E. & Sullivan, P. (1998). Women on the networks: Searching for e-spaces of their own. In S. C. Ja…
  18. Birth in four cultures: A crosscultural investigation of childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, …
  19. 10.1080/00335630701425100
  20. Maternal-infant bonding
  21. 10.1515/mult.2004.001
  22. The rhetoric of midwifery: Gender, knowledge, and power
  23. Mentor, S. (1998). IVF, ART, and complex agency in the world of techno birth. In R. Davis-Floyd & J. Dumit (E…
  24. The American way of birth
  25. 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2004.tb00856.x
    Acta Paediatrica  
  26. Birth plans (Listserv thread)
  27. On the rhetorics of mental disability
  28. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world
  29. 10.1001/jama.294.3.359
  30. 10.1017/CBO9780511615184
  31. Lying-in: A history of childbirth in America
  32. Misconceptions: Truth, lies, and the unexpected on the journey to motherhood