Understanding Baby Loss The Sociology of Life, Death and Post-Mortem

This book offers an in-depth sociological analysis of parent and professional experience of baby loss, examining the role that post-mortem can play in the wider context of bereavement.

Understanding baby loss offers an extraordinary ethnographic exploration of the sensitive subject of baby loss and post-mortem. The book combines an in-depth sociological analysis of clinical and technological aspects of the post-mortem process with detailed understandings of parent and professional feelings, emotions and care practices. Throughout the book, the authors show that post-mortem is not just a scientific or clinical examination but, rather, forms a key part of the bereavement process. The book offers a comprehensive and thoughtful account of how parents experience different forms of baby loss, and subsequently make decisions about post-mortem examination. It also analyses some of the challenges professionals face when working in this highly sensitive field of medicine.

The book shows that post-mortem can play a crucial role in establishing cause of death and assist parents with emotional and diagnostic closure. By shedding light on this hidden and taboo aspect of healthcare, Understanding baby loss offers a valuable contribution to the sociology of emotions, medical sociology, sociology of work, death and dying studies and science and technology studies.

This book offers a detailed and sensitive account of how parents experience different forms of baby loss, and subsequently make decisions about post-mortem examination. It also analyses some of the challenges professionals face when working in this highly sensitive field of medicine. It draws on data from an ESRC award-winning UK based study on the development of minimally invasive post-mortem to examine a range of sociologically pertinent issues relating to: ‘trauma’ ‘emotions’, ‘decisions’, ‘care’ ‘technology’ ‘memory’ and the role of ‘social and biological relationships’. By shedding light on this taboo aspect of healthcare, the book provides a highly original contribution to sociology, offering a comprehensive analysis of some of the most pressing concerns in the field to date.