Judith Cockx INTAMS review | Volume 17 | Issue 1 | Spring 2011 | Pages 37 > 47 Experiences of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Early Parenting: Practical Theological Research into the “Lived Religion” of Flemish Heterosexual Expectant Couples (summary) Pregnancy and childbirth are intense parental experiences that can renew or deepen existential and spiritual human meaning-making. However, with the increasing medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth, there is a danger that the experiential aspects may be minimized and that existential and spiritual meanings might be lost. Using qualitative empirical research, the author explores how expectant Flemish parents subjectively experience expecting a child and becoming a parent as events that raise, develop, and sometimes question frames of reference for meaning-making. The author uses the interplay between the categories “heteronomy,” “autonomy,” “relationality,” and “ambiguity” as an analytical tool for interpreting the ideas that interviewed parents express about expecting a child and becoming a parent. These are then considered in light of philosophical and theological theories, concepts and frameworks about parenting and giving birth. The article further examines the extent to which the experiences of the interviewed parents challenge or enrich existing philosophical and theological frames of reference for human meaning-making. This dialog between the lived experiences of pregnancy and giving birth and the theological and philosophical theories offers inspiration for renewed (pastoral) practices of support for parents during pregnancy, childbirth and early parenting. All the remaining articles in this issue are written by junior scholars who are presently involved in doctoral studies at the Theology Faculty of the Catholic University of Leuven. They will allow readers of the INTAMS review to get a cursory insight into a variety of topics and research questions that are all more or less closely related to the central focus of this journal. Maryana Hnyp from Ukraine reopens the question of divorce and remarriage in the Roman Catholic Church and argues that a sustainable theological and pastoral solution to this thorny issue will not be possible without a conversion of mentality and attitude, a conversion toward what the Orthodox tradition calls and practices as the “economy of salvation”. Flemish researcher Judith Cockx has investigated how young parents experience pregnancy, child-birth and early parenting and what existential and spiritual meaning they attribute to it; she shows how these experiences challenge common religious frames of reference and what would be needed in terms of a renewed pastoral practice to better support parents during these critical moments of their relationship. Nenad Polgar from Croatia diagnoses a stalemate between traditionalist and revisionist positions in the theological discussion about homosexuality. In his article he searches for an alternative reading of the debate, one ultimately that uncovers the hidden agendas of both camps and deconstructs the deeper projects they are involved in. Finally, Gregory A. Obanado from Nigeria provides an example of peaceful interreligious coexistence between Muslims and Christians in the Afemai region of his home country; he argues that the African concept of family solidarity has the potential to cut across the border of different religious belonging, provided it will also transcend family loyalties toward the universal idea of all humans belonging to the one family of God. Judith Cockx, born in 1987 in Belgium, is a PhD student at the Research Department of Pastoral Theology at the Faculty of Theology, K.U. Leuven. In 2010 she wrote her master’s thesis with the title "Experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and early parenting in the light of meaning-making: a practical theological research". Presently, she is doing research on the methodology of practical theology as hermeneutical study of "lived religion", focusing especially on experiences of men and women becoming father and mother.