Creative providers: Counseling and counselors in family planning and reproductive health

This paper is a comparative qualitative analysis of counseling and counselors in family planning and reproductive health services in four settings: two in the United States, one in London, and one in Kenya. Accomplished counselors perform in a dual sense, carrying out a difficult task and doing so in a way that is skillful, realized, and persuasive. Because counseling protocols provide only the barest indications of how counseling is to be done, counselors must improvise their performances. To do this, they draw on structuring resources from the wider society and culture as well as the settings in which they work.