Abstract
In post-Soviet Russian society, new cohorts of women have been socialised into norms which are structurally different from those of their parents’ generation. They consider their private lives to be arenas of deliberate planning and conscious choice. For them, planning has become a question of individual aspiration and responsibility—at least, for women with resources—while a ‘responsible’ and intensive motherhood cultural model has gained a prominent place in contemporary Russian society. In line with this, young women perceive child rearing solely as their personal responsibility. This, in its turn, implies a strategic attitude towards pregnancy and childbirth.
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Notes
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Lazarus, ‘What Do Women Want?’, p. 36.
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- 25.
Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova, ‘Patients in Contemporary Russian Reproductive Health Care Institutions’, p. 287.
- 26.
According to MH websites, the prices for paid maternity services in public MHs in St. Petersburg range from 35,000 to 230,000 rubles (from 500 to 2900 GBP) (June 2015).
- 27.
The majority of our informants signed an official contract for services with the maternity hospital and/or the obstetrician and paid officially for delivery services. A few of them had informal agreements and made informal payments; some did not have any agreement, but also paid for the childbirth services as an expression of their gratitude. The majority of informants said that they prefer official contracts and payments as they were aware of the struggle with ‘corruption’ in MHs and they did not want to let down medical professionals. In addition they thought they would have more legal guarantees if they paid officially.
- 28.
See flashmob #nasilievrodah (vkontakte social network), ‘Violence in childbirth’, launched in 2016 in Ukraine and used by women of Belarus, Russia, etc., https://soznatelno.ru/nasilie-v-rodah/, accessed 25 March 2017. The authors of the hashtag have set a challenge to foreground the problem of violence in childbirth that is often ignored. Using this hashtag, women tell stories of abuse, physical and psychological violence committed against them by medical staff.
- 29.
Gift-giving is one of the practices accompanying the engagement of clients with the private sector. After successful delivery in a woman-friendly environment providing warm (albeit institutional) care, mothers express their gratitude by symbolic and/or monetary gifts to doctors and, especially, to midwives and nurses (flowers, alcohol, fruits and sweets, perfumes or cosmetics, etc.).
- 30.
Evgeniia Korotkikh and Vera Popova, ‘Platnye Rody: Ozhidaniia Patsientok i Osobennosti Vzaimodeystviia s Akusherkoy’, Ekaterina Borozdina and Anna Temkina (eds), Meniaiushcheesia Rodovspomozhenie: Vzgliad Akusherok i Sotsiologov. SPb: EUSPb, 2017, pp. 24–30.
- 31.
‘Respectability is one of the most ubiquitous signifiers of class. It informs how we speak, who we speak to, how we classify others, what we study and how we know who we are (or are not). Respectability is usually the concern of those who are not seen to have it. Respectability would not be of concern here, if the working classes (Black and White) had not consistently been classified as dangerous, polluting, threatening, revolutionary, pathological and without respect’ Beverley Skeggs, Formation of class and Gender. Becoming Respectable, London: Sage, 1997, p. 1.
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Temkina, A., Zdravomyslova, E. (2018). Responsible Motherhood, Practices of Reproductive Choice and Class Construction in Contemporary Russia. In: Attwood, L., Schimpfössl, E., Yusupova, M. (eds) Gender and Choice after Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73661-7_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73661-7_7
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