Many of birthing women's successes in increasing their powers over childbirth procedures have depended upon women reeducating themselves about childbirth. The enormous proliferation in recent decades of popular literature about giving birth, much of which advocates decreasing routine medical interventions, is evidence of women's attempts to reclaim knowledge previously more commonly held within women's world. When birth moved to the hospital and became dominated by technical interventions, women lost their understanding and familiarity with the processes of labor and delivery. Many women, realizing that their lack of knowledge distances them from their own bodies, are trying tor recover some of that lost knowledge through self-education in normal functions...This third group (as discussed in the second paragraph) is a conundrum to me and I think it is the main reason why the birth culture in the U.S. ISN'T changing rapidly in response to evidence-based information, great books, informative publications and websites, helpful doulas, awesome childbirth classes, etc. How do you reach women who just don't care? And, why as advocates, do we care if they don't? :( And, is it any of our business if a large subset of the population finds medical control of birth perfectly acceptable and even desirable?
In addition to the women who completely challenge medical authority and those who want to find ways to work in cooperation with it, there is a third group of American women today who find medical control of childbirth as practiced in most hospitals perfectly acceptable. They find the prospect of delivering babies frightening or uninteresting, and they wish to experience as little of it as possible. They want to be assured of a healthy outcome, but they do not feel the need to participate actively in bringing it about. They, like many women of the 1920's and 1930's, eagerly turn over their decision-making power to their doctors, who, in turn, readily accept it. The women hope that medicine can provide a streamlined and easy experience and that they will not have to suffer too much either in the process of labor and delivery or in its aftermath. Many women enter the hospital and emerge from it with their babies without having given the experience itself very much thought. (emphasis mine)
I'd like to explore why I think it is our business in a later post, but first I have to clarify why exactly that is...