City Research Online

Abstract

Although antenatal physical activity is increasingly promoted, uptake remains low and safety concerns persist. Social discourse reveals how physical activity is constructed as either compatible or incompatible with motherhood. Building on the literature, this study focuses on the discursive practices pregnant women deploy to account for a proactive physical activity identity; one that is uncompromised by pregnancy, but cognizant of exercising safely. Twelve pregnant women participated in single semistructured interviews. Data were analyzed using critical discursive psychology and positioning theory. To account for a proactive physical activity identity, pregnant women assumed empowered, advocate, and rebellious subject-positions, which were navigated through interpretative repertoires: reframing motherhood, retaining autonomy, and physical activity motivational. Pregnant women resisted traditional mothering virtues of sacrifice and selflessness and negotiated a medicalized-risk discourse to construct physical activity as an autonomy-giving practice necessary for self-care, independence, and preparedness for birth/labor. The findings reveal the sociocultural and historical debates concerning the exercising pregnant body with which proactive pregnant women contend, and how a rebellious subject-position is necessitated to account for a proactive physical activity identity. Pro-antenatal physical activity messaging should cultivate empowered and advocate subject-positions and reframe societal misconceptions of the exercising pregnant woman to attenuate the need for rebellion.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Authors. Published by Taylor and Francis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons: Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Publisher Keywords:	Pregnancy, physical activity, discursive psychology, positioning theory, UK
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform R Medicine > RG Gynecology and obstetrics
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Nursing & Midwifery
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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