ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on material explanations of poverty and analyses the issues and limitations inherent in policy approaches, both in the recent past and contemporaneously. It provides naturalistic and individualistic explanations, in its exploration of socio-political and economic factors that combine to increase the odds of unfavourable pregnancy and childbirth experiences and outcomes for significant numbers of women in contemporary Britain. DoyalL and GoughI (1991) assert that society should be accountable where the social conditions which foster poverty and deprivation, and their consequences for health, are a product of political-economic decisions. Health, well-being and illness are profoundly influenced by the ways in which particular societies are structured, and the structure of a society is manufactured from political and economic ideas and decisions. Getting to know and understand the beliefs that a poor woman may have about how she should behave healthwise during her pregnancy is a prerequisite for introducing any change.
