And “what has happened since then…”

Changes in childbirth culture in Hungary since the research of Ágnes Losonczi

Abstract

In Hungary, Ágnes Losonczi was the first scholar in the field of social sciences to address the issue of the quality of childbirth, embedding it within her wide-ranging body of work and within a research programme exploring the social determinants of childbirth and the anomalies of the healthcare system. She recognised that both obstetric care and the socially embedded medical approach to childbirth were areas worthy of investigation, therefore, as research leader, she considered it essential to include this area in the analysis. In her volume, The Time of Man (2009), Losonczi offered a comprehensive reflection on the period that had passed since the previous large-scale research (“What has happened since then...”), discussing the transformations in obstetrics, the changing social environment, and their interrelations. Since then, much has changed. Methods once considered alternative have slowly infiltrated the formal care system, but attitudes are still changing only gradually — both within healthcare and in society at large. However, the practical implementation of the theoretical possibilities and the experience of healthcare professionals or mothers are extremely complex and contradictory, with cognitive conflicts lurking in the background. Over the past two decades, as a cultural anthropologist, I have examined the relationship between modern and postmodern birth cultures, the debates surrounding them, the responses of the actors involved, and the broader social embeddedness of change. With the involvement of my university (sociology) students, we explored topics such as attitudes toward childbirth, birth experiences, home birth, doula work, paternal interpretations, the situation of midwives, and the experiences of the 2021 healthcare reform, within several thematic research projects. The work has been, and continues to be, based primarily on qualitative methods—including in-depth interviews with thematic analysis, participant observation, netnography, and continuous interaction with healthcare, social, scientific, and activist actors shaping the field of childbirth. In 2017, we also conducted a survey among doulas (n=95), and together with Erzsébet Földházi, we combined interviews with a questionnaire study (n=1019) to assess maternal experiences related to the 2021 changes. Similarly, our current home birth research employs a mixed-method approach. In my study, following an overview of international efforts to humanize childbirth and of Hungarian obstetric policy, I analyse the transformations in Hungarian childbirth culture along some of the themes identified by Ágnes Losonczi, drawing upon the aforementioned research findings.