Childbirth

“there is more diversity in women’s experiences and in their reactions to both medicalized and ‘natural’ birth than the critique suggests. . . the absence of medical intervention does not necessarily make for a positive, empowering experience; nor does medical intervention necessarily leave women feeling alienated from the experience. . . . the absence of medical intervention during a childbirth does not always produce a sense of efficacy; nor does medical intervention necessarily engender alienation (Fox & Worts, 335). . . . for the couples in this study, there was a very strong relationship between whether or not the woman’s partner was generally supportive and whether or not the woman received medical intervention. . . . Women whose partners were not very supportive usually requested pain relief before making every attempt to get her through the birth without it (337). . . . The dearth of social and emotional support for motherhood may be a major contributor to women’s desire for, and acceptance of, medical pain relief during childbirth. . . . help with pain may be important precisely because women assume personal responsibility for mothering following birth. What is problematic about medical management is no that it offers too much ‘care’ but that it substitutes for more general social support of women in labor and after the birth, and offers instead a very limited kind of help – mostly geared to the baby’s delivery” (338). . . . it is hazardous to adopt the concept [of control] uncritically in discussing a situation as intractable as childbirth. . . ‘control’ meant a number of different things (339) . . . control means different things to different women. . . . women giving birth can experience the situation as being ‘out of control’ for reasons other than the presence or absence of medical intervention; such reasons can include a hospital’s staff’s failure to respond to requests for pain relief. Thus, more important than control (narrowly defined) seems to be whether a woman’s needs are addressed – however the woman in question defines them (340). . . . An important feature of that [social] context is women’s privatized responsibility for child care and a dearth of social supports for mothering. In turn, the immediate context of most births in North America involves hospitals that reproduce privatized responsibility and offer women only a limited kind of assistance. We argue that because of minimal social support, many women welcome medical intervention, both out of concern for their babies’ immediate welfare and because it promises to leave them in better shape to assume the extensive responsibilities that will confront them as mothers” (343).