Abstract

Pregnancy is not only a personal event, it also entails physical changes visible to public view. Professional clinical monitoring and the use of technologies (e.g. scans) means that the private internal space is also available for more general public view and comment. The current rhetoric of good mothering has also increased the monitoring of pregnant women’s behaviour, leading to a proliferation of advice or guidance, including most recently from the media. This article argues that this attention has expanded the place of pregnancy as a matter of public concern, increasing the space taken up in the public domain by pregnancy topics, in addition to the psychological and physical occupation with and of private bodily spaces of pregnancy.