M3 Discussion
The video Midwives: A Global Perspective on Childbirth link opens in a new window explores the influence of culture, law and religion on pregnancy and birth in 23 different countries. Based on the interviews conducted with the several midwives from these different societies, discuss the cultural, legal and religious factors that you found to be similar across the different cultures and those you found to be the most strikingly different. Include ideologies regarding gender roles, sexuality, reproductive roles and female reproductive autonomy, and medical technology in your discussion.
For each discussion forum the following are expected:
Initial posting of 150-250 words
Refer specifically to the assigned readings and/or video in your posts.
Instructor’s Commentary
Stone states in Kinship and Gender that “kinship involves much more, however, than relations through descent, marriage, social structure, and rights and obligations between kin. Indeed, kinship is an ideology of human relationships; it involves ideas about how humans are created and the nature and meaning of their biological and moral connections with others” (Stone, pg. 9).
The readings and video assigned in this module present case studies demonstrating how the traditions and practices of reproduction, child birth and child rearing reflect cultural ideologies that are grounded in their specific histories, religions, economies and politics, as well as in their concepts of kinship and relatedness. While everywhere, all cultures task kin, and particularly parents, with producing children and teaching them how to be members of their society, the manner in which these tasks are accomplished vary widely in ways that reflect the ideologies driving them. Much of what we experience of our own culture is difficult to articulate; is is like speaking our native language.
We learn the rules and expectations of our culture as we grow up (a process anthropologists call acculturation). Some of the rules are explicit, in that we are overtly taught them; some are implicit, and we learn them by trial and error, correction and by observation. The task of the ethnographer is to deconstruct, or tease out if you will, aspects of cultural learning and socialization that are explicit (that is the easy part) and aspects of cultural learning and rules that are only implied and are implicit. In analyzing both the explicit and implicit rules governing “appropriate cultural behavior” within the context of a given culture’s unique history gives us access to the underlying ideologies, beliefs and values driving traditions.
Students are expected to engage with assigned learning resources and in so doing develop sensitivities to cultural variations and how such variations are best understood holistically, as expressions that are grounded in the specific logic, experiences and beliefs of different cultures.
The required reading for this module include sections of the book, A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Eight Societies. The text is a fictive child rearing manual for eight real cultures. The manual is based on ethnographic study of these cultures. While the manuals are not complete ethnographies, each of the 8 manuals provides ethnographic detail about pregnancy, birth practices and child rearing traditions that demonstrate how culture, history, religion, economics and law are embedded in practice. Reviewing Chapter 1 in Stone’s Kinship and Gender will be helpful in deconstructing cultural ideologies embedded in the manuals directions for “how to birth and raise baby.”
Video Assignment
Midwives: A Global Perspective on Childbirth
Through interviews with midwives from 23 countries, this program explores the influence of culture, law, and religion on pregnancy and childbirth. Childbirth practices vary around the world: Will the birth occur at home, or in a hospital? With or without painkillers, and in what position? Who will be in the labor room? A Chilean midwife incarcerated by the Pinochet regime describes the powerful experience of helping pregnant prisoners deliver, and an American explains why she feels that childbirth in the U.S. has become depersonalized. Stressing the role of empathy in their profession, the midwives also discuss family planning, C-sections, female circumcision, and whether parents really do prefer boys over girls. Contains nudity associated with childbirth. 60 minutes.
Incase you cannot open video, here is the transcript. & the citation for it.
Films Media Group. (2010). Midwives: A global perspective on childbirth. Films On Demand. https://digital.films.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=16071&xtid=43933.
