Dipl.-Soz. Janne Krumbügel

Janne Krumbügel studied sociology with a focus on gender studies in Frankfurt and Pamplona. She was student assistant for Prof.’in Dr. Eva Sänger in her research projects “Enacting Pregnancy: The Role of the Sonogram in Prenatal Diagnosis” and “Is Prenatal Diagnosis Changing? The Implementation of Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis of Down Syndrome in Germany”. Furthermore, she worked as a freelance scientific editor and translator and as author of medical advice articles.

Her research interests surround the topics pregnancy, the transition to parenthood, consulting and advice literature, and medicine. She is expecially interested in gender relations at the transition to parenthood, as well as medical diagnostics and reproduction technologies in relation with ideas of family and gender. She uses qualitative research methodologies, primarily discourse analysis. In her dissertation project, she analyses interpellations directed to parents to be in pregnancy advice literature.

research project
The transition to parenthood in pregnancy advice literature

Pregnancy advice literature promises orientation and aid to decision-making during pregnancy, birth and the first weeks with the newborn to their readership. Encompassing health and medical questions, work-related and relationship matters, they address and problematize a broad spectrum of topics concerning changes during the transition to parenthood. The advice books thus present themselves as encompassing ‘transition companions’, which transport ideas about ‘good’ and ‘proper’ life. In the dissertation project, advice books are considered as sites of (re)production of those historically changing ideas of transitions.

In this context I follow the question of how parents-to-be are addressed and discursively interpellated through german pregnancy advice literature. Which expectations and norms are directed towards them, and which image of parents-to-be is transported? As societal concepts of family and gender have considerably changed in the past decades, the analysis focuses on ideas of gender relations in current pregnancy books. A further focal point lies in medical risk discourses and the connected responsibilization of parents-to-be. Methodologically, the project applies a discourse analytical approach.

Presentations and publications

“Perfectly relaxed and prepared – the ambivalence of self-optimization discourses in pregnancy advice literature.” Presentation at the 27. DGfE-Congress, March 2020

„Ideas and images of the pregnant body in advice literature”. Presentation at the international conference „Doing transitions in the life course. Discourses, practices, institutions, subjects, University of Tübingen, February 2020

“Advice literature as a material of reflexive transition research.” Presentation at the 26. DGfE-Congress, March 2018

Krumbügel, Janne (2015): Der Übergang zur Elternschaft in ärztlichen Schwangerschaftsratgebern. Eine diskursanalytische Untersuchung von Mutter- und Vaterbildern. In: Marga Günther et al. (Hg.): Mutter, Vater, Kind – Geschlechterpraxen in der Elternschaft. Berlin: Budrich Verlag, S. 141-156. [The transition to parenthood in medical advice brochures. A discourse-analytical exploration of ideas of mother- and fatherhood.]