Forced migrant fathers’ experiences of pregnancy and childbirth: a hermeneutic phenomenological study
Andy Mprah, Melanie Haith-Cooper, Fiona Meddings · 2026
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Description
Andy Mprah, Melanie Haith-Cooper, and Fiona Meddings report a 2026 qualitative study of forced migrant fathers experiencing pregnancy and childbirth inside the British NHS. Research on migrant maternity care centres mothers, leaving fathers' views largely unrecorded. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the team held in-depth semi-structured interviews with fifteen fathers who had recently seen a child born while living in the asylum system. Framework analysis distilled their accounts into themes.
Three themes dominated: feeling sidelined, an alien NHS maternity journey, and life inside the asylum system itself. Fathers described being marginalized by cultural misunderstandings and language barriers at exactly the moments they wanted to support their partners. Resilience and improvised coping strategies ran through the stories alongside the frustration. The authors call for staff training, better communication, and resources shaped for these fathers, so maternity services involve them instead of overlooking them.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Andy Mprah, Melanie Haith-Cooper, Fiona Meddings |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 68717 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |