Women's Decision-Making And Factors Affecting Their Choice Of ...

as a safe place for women to give birth, as it reduced the mortality and morbidity
for both mother and baby, while the woman's home represented risk. This view is
reflected in successive government committees that gradually recommended
moving childbirth away from the woman's place to the hospital (Department of
Health and Social Security 1970; House of Commons Social Services Committee
1980; Ministry of Health 1959).
The thesis proposes that the view introduced by successive government
committees that the woman's place was unsafe might still influence how women
view childbirth today. The thesis postulates that the difference between women
who plan to have their babies at home and those planning a hospital delivery
might be a result of how they perceive childbirth, and the risk they attach to
delivering at home and vice versa. The concept of risk perception is explored, and
an attempt made to identify any similarities with childbirth.
Risk is a term derived from the French word risque, and was first used in
England in the early nineteenth century (Moore 1983). According to the Concise
Oxford dictionary, it means —a chance or possibility of danger, loss, injury, or
other adverse consequences" (Thompson 1995). The term in the thesis is used to
refer to the possibility of adverse consequences.
The word perception implies a potential gap between objective
information about the world, and the representation of that world which each
individual constructs for himself from direct sensory input, externally supplied
information, and from their own inference processes and selective attention
(Thomas and Otway 1980). Risk perception is therefore subjective, relating to the
individual's evaluation of potential hazards and how they are likely to be affected.
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