• Understanding baby loss
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Understanding baby loss

$36.95
$36.95 $36.95
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This book offers an in-depth sociological analysis of parent and professional experience of baby loss, examining the role that post-mortem can play in the wider context of bereavement.
  • 03 June 2025
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This book offers a detailed and sensitive account of how parents experience different forms of baby loss, and subsequently make decisions about post-mortem examination. It also analyses some of the challenges professionals face when working in this highly sensitive field of medicine. It draws on data from an ESRC award-winning UK based study on the development of minimally invasive post-mortem to examine a range of sociologically pertinent issues relating to: ‘trauma’ ‘emotions’, ‘decisions’, ‘care’ ‘technology’ ‘memory’ and the role of ‘social and biological relationships’. By shedding light on this taboo aspect of healthcare, the book provides a highly original contribution to sociology, offering a comprehensive analysis of some of the most pressing concerns in the field to date.
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Price: $36.95
Pages: 248
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Publication Date: 03 June 2025
ISBN: 9781526191564
Format: Paperback
BISACs: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, Sociology: death and dying, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying, Medical sociology, Coping with / advice about death and bereavement
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Winner of British Sociological Association Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2024

CHOICE: Recommended

'By shedding light on this taboo aspect of healthcare, the book provides a highly original contribution to the sociology of emotions, medical sociology, death and dying studies and science and technology studies. It is a book that I wholeheartedly recommend to further advance understanding of perinatal bereavement and post-mortem care.'
Dr Kerry Jones, Senior Lecturer in End-of-Life Care, The Open University

Kate Reed is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester
Julie Ellis is a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield
Elspeth Whitby is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Introduction
1 Trauma
2 Decisions
3 Technology
4 Emotions
5 Care
6 Memory
7 Relationships
Conclusion: Life after death
References