Exploring social and health care representations about home birth: An Integrative Literature Review

Aims: Exploring social and health care representations of home birth by conducting an integrative review of the literature. Design: Integrative Literature Review. Data sources: The search was based on the following keywords: “birth, home,” “home birth,” “childbirth, home.” And the terms: “planned home birth,” and “empowerment women homebirth” (in English). “partos en casa,” and “partos domiciliarios” (in Spanish) in the following databases: Biomedical Central, Cochrane Library, Dialnet, DOAJ, Lilacs, PubMed, Scopus, Scielo, and Web of Science. Review methods: A total of 156 publications dated between 2004 and 2017 were initially obtained and a total of 41 articles were finally selected according to the criteria of inclusion, methodological rigor, and researchers’ triangulation. Results: Four dimensions of the issue emerged out of the 41 articles analyzed: (a) the Dimension of “Empowerment in Childbirth;” (b) the Dimension of “Comparative Socio-Medical Childbirth Studies;” (c) the “Institutional Dimension of Childbirth;” (d) the “Cultural Dimension of Childbirth.”. Conclusion: From the health management perspective, home birth is not widely accepted today as a valid and safe alternative. However, women's social representations indicate an interest in returning to birth at home as a response to the excessive medicalization and institutionalization of childbirth, and value highly its autonomy and comfort.