The Influence of Cesarean Delivery on Women's Childbearing Choices: A Qualitative Investigation

Women are less likely to continue childbearing after cesareans, regardless of birth order, and this likelihood continually decreases with more cesareans. Recent literature suggests that, rather than being a surgical consequence, this cessation in reproduction is due to choice. However, low income women are less influenced by prior cesareans and are more likely to have higher numbers of cesareans. We hypothesize that women limit childbearing after cesareans based upon knowledge of the risks, and that this reasoning may be less prevalent among low income women due to disparities in access to counseling, health literacy, or other social characteristics. The fact that low socio-economic status is also associated with severe obstetric complications only underscores the importance of understanding this difference in reproductive behavior. This proposed qualitative analysis, consisting of in-depth interviews of women who have undergone two, three or four cesarean deliveries, will explore women’s thoughts about childbearing after cesareans and whether thematic differences exist across socio-economic status that can inform clinicians about best practices in delivering high quality counseling