In conjunction with aims to reduce infant and maternal mortality, antenatal care in Brazil is based on risk assessment and monitoring. Exploring the reliance of pregnancy management policies on a distinction between ‘low’ and ‘high-risk’ pregnancies, I conducted two ethnographic studies of pregnant women from a working-class background in Recife and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In addition to in-depth interviews with women and professionals, observations were made in public maternity wards and neighbourhood health units. With an approach focused on notions of governance and subjectivity, my data show that risk becomes not only a technique for regulating pregnancies, but also an important dimension of the reproductive experience of women. However, tensions appear between these two dimensions (regulation and experience) of risk. An analysis of my data sheds light on three tensions in particular. Firstly, the notion of risk appears to be a cultural resource for health professionals to transmit norms of parenthood to certain categories of women. Secondly, it allows for distinctions between two registers of care: medicalisation and healthisation. While on one hand the risk approach is aligned with a process of technicisation and pathologisation of pregnancies, it also introduces behavioural and psycho-social perspectives on pregnancy. Thirdly, the risk approach promotes an individualising tendency in the management of pregnancy. Women’s experiences lead them to make pragmatic adjustments to regulations. Women circumvent certain norms and easily articulate the registers of medicalisation and healthisation according to the situation, simultaneously incorporating their experience of risk in a social network of mutual help. This article thus shows that the analysis of pregnancy risk management must take into consideration the difference between expectations regarding the effect of regulations implemented by institutions and the de facto experience of women in a specific socio-cultural context.

结合降低婴儿和产妇死亡率的目标，巴西的产前保健基于风险评估和监测。为了探究妊娠管理政策对“低”和“高风险”妊娠之间的区别的依赖，我在巴西累西腓和里约热内卢对工人阶级的孕妇进行了两项人种志研究。除了与妇女和专业人员进行深入访谈外，还在公共产科病房和社区卫生部门进行了观察。通过以治理和主观性观念为重点的方法，我的数据表明，风险不仅成为调节怀孕的技术，而且还是妇女生育经验的重要方面。但是，在风险的这两个维度（法规和经验）之间会出现紧张关系。对我的数据进行的分析特别揭示了三种张力。首先，风险概念似乎是卫生专业人员向某些类别的女性传播生育规范的文化资源。其次，它允许区分两种护理记录：医疗和健康。一方面，风险方法与妊娠的技术化和病理化过程相吻合，但同时也引入了怀孕的行为和心理社会观点。第三，风险方法促进了妊娠管理的个体化趋势。妇女的经验使她们对法规进行务实的调整。妇女规避某些规范，并根据情况轻松阐明医疗和健康登记册，同时将他们的冒险经验整合到互助的社交网络中。因此，本文表明，对妊娠风险管理的分析必须考虑到机构对法规实施效果的期望与妇女在特定社会文化背景下的实际经验。