Childbirth in Early Swedish Television: From Promotion to Criticism of the Welfare State

Abstract This article explores the shifting and competing ways in which childbirth, obstetrics, and maternity care were represented during the first two decades of television in Sweden. While childbirth on screen has a much longer history in both educational film and commercial cinema, the introduction of public service television in the late 1950s created a new space in Sweden for both educational and critical representations of reproduction, which had the potential of reaching a much larger national audience than was previously possible. Analyzing various television formats dealing with and displaying births from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, this article examines how pregnant and birthing bodies were made visible in the new medium of television and what role these programs played in the larger debates on maternity care, obstetrics, and the Swedish welfare state in this period. Centrally, the article discusses the shift from a mode of representation in which childbirth was depicted within the framework of sex education or information about the welfare society’s support systems to feminist representations giving voice to women’s experiences and criticizing the medicalized perspective on childbirth found in Swedish healthcare. In this way, the article highlights shifting historical discourses of childbirth within the frames of a public service institution and a Nordic welfare state and emphasizes the importance of moving images as both an art form and an influential communication tool in postwar discussions of healthcare issues.