The tyranny of expectations of post-natal delight: gendered happiness

Abstract

This article explores the contested nature of childbirth practices with a historical perspective. The article discusses the modern medical/interventionist model of birth now predominant in the UK and examines the consequences of prevailing norms for women. It includes some reflections on the regulation of pregnancy and the transition to motherhood and notes some counter-cultural movements such as ‘free-birthing’.

Keywords:

• New motherhood
• free birth
• birthing practices
• iatrogenic outcomes
• liminality
• The Birth Project

Notes

1. I would point out that women’s experience is heterogeneous and that there are different implications for the words ‘pregnancy’ and ‘motherhood’. This essay does develop a theory, which I hope is articulated clearly enough. Following the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Toril Moi suggests that ‘subjectivity is neither a thing nor an inner, emotional world. Thus there can be no ‘identity’ divorced from the world the subject is experiencing’ (Moi, 1999, p. 81). I concur. Therefore, to discuss women’s experience of childbirth primarily as a pathological response, such as post-natal depression for example, is to reify a complex set of experiences to which women are subject in a deterministic, reductive and oppressive manner. Drawing on field theory, this essay asks the reader to think about the field as highly contested and to think further about what this might mean for women.

2. Maternal death is the death of women while pregnant or shortly after pregnancy.

3. Object relations theory is a theory of development, from psychoanalysis, which places great emphasis on interpersonal relations and especially the relationship between the infant and mother for the infant’s psychological wellbeing and psychic development. Some of the discourses about mothering place great emphasis on the mother-baby dyad. From the 1940s these ideas became very influential in social psychology and social policy. The notion of ‘separation anxiety’ became popularised in the 1960s in Britain. Riley notes of Bowlby that: ‘He knew that a theory which claimed that to separate children from their mothers might do violence to ‘human nature’ also embodied a powerful sentiment’ (Riley, 1983, p. 108).

4. It is also a potential detriment to the infants, because if they have several regular caregivers and one of them disappears they are less likely to suffer from separation trauma.

5. Hogan, 2012 for a more detailed critique of particular theories.

6. See Showalter (1985) for more on this theme.

7. WHO REPORT section 4.1 (2015, p. 21). Developing countries account for 99% (286,000) of the global maternal deaths with the sub-Saharan Africa region alone accounting for 62% (179,000) followed by Southern Asia (69,000). Oceania is the region with the fewest maternal deaths at 510.

8. The Birth Project. http://www.derby.ac.uk/health-and-social-care/research/birth-project/

9. Women over a number of decades have reported feeling unhappy about the way medical professionals treat them, that they feel their emotional needs are not met, that they are ‘left uniformed about the procedures being carried out’ (a rather telling phrase; Davis, 2012, p. 107).