The management of breech birth is a contested field where experts from a range of interested disciplines jostle for supremacy both within the academy and the clinic. Within such a setting, women are positioned, rhetorically at least, as authors of their own birthing story, choosing which expert’s voice to favour to achieve the birthing experience they most covet. To suggest that this is a universal, global experience for women facing risk with breech presentation, however, fails to capture the diversity of the lived experiences of women across the world. Using evidence taken from different countries, we will show how Beck’s risk thesis of reflexive modernity in the ‘risk society’ offers insights while at the same time fails to adequately consider organisational, cultural and socio-economic diversity in relation to breech birth.