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Subjective meanings of 'unintended' pregnancy: interviews from understanding fertility management in contemporary Australia

journal contribution
posted on 2017-01-01, 00:00 authored by M Kirkman, C Stubber, H Rowe, Sara HoltonSara Holton, C Bayly, L Jordan, J McBain, K McNamee, V Sinnott, J Fisher
Unintended pregnancy can be difficult to identify and conceptualise. We aimed to understand how unintended pregnancies are constructed, explained and situated in a reproductive life. A total of 41 women and 7 men aged 20-50 years were interviewed in depth. Transcripts were analysed using iterative hermeneutic techniques informed by narrative theory. Of 34 participants who had been pregnant or had a partner in pregnancy, 12 women and 1 man described 23 'unintended' pregnancies, about half of which ended in abortion. Their accounts reveal that an unintended pregnancy is identified subjectively, that the same pregnancy may be identified by one partner in the pregnancy as unintended and by the other as intended, and that a researcher's supposedly objective assessment of an unintended pregnancy may be inconsistent with the assessment of the woman who experienced it. A pejorative discourse was evident, predominantly among participants who did not report having an unintended pregnancy: women use an 'unintended' pregnancy to entrap men. Accounts from five participants reporting an unintended pregnancy were selected for illustration. An appreciation of the role such a pregnancy might play in an individual life requires a nuanced understanding of the complexity of human experience and a resistance to simple binary categorisation.

History

Journal

Culture, health and sexuality

Volume

19

Issue

2

Pagination

179 - 193

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Location

Abingdon, Eng.

ISSN

1369-1058

eISSN

1464-5351

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2016, Informa UK Limited