Medicalization of childbirth: the meanings attributed by the literature on childbirth care in Brazil

Abstract This study analyzes the meanings attributed to the concept of the medicalization of childbirth from a narrative review of the literature in national journals published between 2000 and 2017. It is based on the more general concept of medicalization – understood as the process by which medicine broadens and consolidates its area of activity in the various sectors of society – and the different formulations of the concept conceived by twentieth-century scholars. Five categories were created that related the medicalization of childbirth with interventions, professional dispute, violation of the rights of pregnant women, the birth scenario, and the impact of the medicalization of society. In the first four categories there is a predominance of meanings that explore the interface between medicalization and humanization, considered two analytical super categories, with a predominance of a critique of the medicalized model. Setting aside this analysis model, the medicalization of childbirth category as a reflection of the medicalization of society focuses on a sense of medicalization of childbirth as part of a broader process involving different actors who are part of the care process, pointing to a possibility of more in-depth analysis in which it considers the complex connection between modern health and society.