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“It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic

OBJECTIVE: This study examines the schemas that women employed during the COVID‐19 pandemic to make sense of their reproductive desires. BACKGROUND: Existing research on reproduction during epidemics suggests that there are variable population responses to periods of long‐term social uncertainty. Ho...

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Autor principal: Wright, Kelsey Q.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9347647/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35935914
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12851
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author Wright, Kelsey Q.
author_facet Wright, Kelsey Q.
author_sort Wright, Kelsey Q.
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description OBJECTIVE: This study examines the schemas that women employed during the COVID‐19 pandemic to make sense of their reproductive desires. BACKGROUND: Existing research on reproduction during epidemics suggests that there are variable population responses to periods of long‐term social uncertainty. However, less is known about how individuals make sense of maintaining or adapting their reproductive desires during periods of social upheaval. METHOD: Twenty‐nine women aged 25–35 from a mid‐sized Midwestern county in the United States were recruited and interviewed about their experiences during the first 8 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic. They were asked about their daily lived experiences and their reproductive desires during in‐depth interviews. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic coding. RESULTS: Participants used three normative schemas to describe their reproductive desires during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Heteronormative schemas were used by many participants to articulate their commitment to a heteronormative aged‐staged timeline of life events. Schemas of social support around being pregnant and giving birth were used by participants, primarily those who were currently or recently pregnant, to express grief and loss over the relational experience of having a new baby. Medicalized schemas were expressed by most participants to describe feelings of fear and risk at real or imagined encounters with medical institutions. CONCLUSION: The schemas that participants used to make sense of their reproductive desires demonstrate how sense‐making during a profound event that affects everyday realities allows participants to (re)articulate commitments to existing narratives that reinforce heterosexual, social, and medicalized hierarchies in reproduction.
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spelling pubmed-93476472022-08-03 “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic Wright, Kelsey Q. J Marriage Fam Contextual Influences on Marriage and Fertility OBJECTIVE: This study examines the schemas that women employed during the COVID‐19 pandemic to make sense of their reproductive desires. BACKGROUND: Existing research on reproduction during epidemics suggests that there are variable population responses to periods of long‐term social uncertainty. However, less is known about how individuals make sense of maintaining or adapting their reproductive desires during periods of social upheaval. METHOD: Twenty‐nine women aged 25–35 from a mid‐sized Midwestern county in the United States were recruited and interviewed about their experiences during the first 8 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic. They were asked about their daily lived experiences and their reproductive desires during in‐depth interviews. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic coding. RESULTS: Participants used three normative schemas to describe their reproductive desires during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Heteronormative schemas were used by many participants to articulate their commitment to a heteronormative aged‐staged timeline of life events. Schemas of social support around being pregnant and giving birth were used by participants, primarily those who were currently or recently pregnant, to express grief and loss over the relational experience of having a new baby. Medicalized schemas were expressed by most participants to describe feelings of fear and risk at real or imagined encounters with medical institutions. CONCLUSION: The schemas that participants used to make sense of their reproductive desires demonstrate how sense‐making during a profound event that affects everyday realities allows participants to (re)articulate commitments to existing narratives that reinforce heterosexual, social, and medicalized hierarchies in reproduction. Wiley Subscription Services, Inc. 2022-05-25 2022-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9347647/ /pubmed/35935914 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12851 Text en © 2022 The Author. Journal of Marriage and Family published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Contextual Influences on Marriage and Fertility
Wright, Kelsey Q.
“It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic
title “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic
title_full “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic
title_fullStr “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic
title_short “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID‐19 pandemic
title_sort “it changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby i did have”: making sense of reproduction during the covid‐19 pandemic
topic Contextual Influences on Marriage and Fertility
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9347647/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35935914
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12851
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