A CULTURAL HISTORY OF 'NATURAL' CHILDBIRTH IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Childbirth is an intimate and complex transaction whose topic is physiological and whose language is cultural / Brigitte Jordan

Stuart Hall defined culture as being about shared meanings.This circular model or "cultural circuit" theory devised by Hall and others in 1997 presents representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation as completely integrated. The review begins with an exploration of the lack of articulation around the maternal body that exists, according to Kristeva because it inhabits the "threshold between culture and nature". Ann Oakley known for her work on childbirth and feminist social science writes too about this liminal space. Reflecting on the uncomfortable nature of this space, Oakley explores conflicts around ideas of 'biological destiny' of reproduction for women and the problems around the cultural need to socialize childbirth. Identifying the contradictions in theories around pregnancy and childbirth as a 'contested space', Candace Johnson points to two 'competing forces': nature/tradition and medicine/technology that occupy this "borderland".

The review provides an overview of the literature around birth from a cross-cultural perspective (Jordan,1978), Spencer 1977 [1950]; Freedman and Ferguson 1950; Ford 1964; Mead and Newton 1967; Newman 1969, 1972); and writing on birth from a bio-social perspective that has started to view birth as an area "within which culture is produced, reproduced and resisted".

Following on from this, the review explores literature around the idea that the medicalisation of childbirth was a "class specified process" (Weitz) and the notion of 'painless childbirth' that emerged in the interwar period. This was in part, as a backlash against what was considered excessive obstetric intervention and the brutal obstetric practices of the early 1900s and also by the Health reform movement, where a return to a more 'natural' mode of life for women was advocated in order to reverse the "ill effects of civilization".
The history of childbirth is in many ways a history of cultural attitudes towards pain. This aspect of birth history is widely documented and analysed (Rich, Simkin, Bergum, Freedman and Ferguson, Mead, Sandelowski, Jasen, Moscucci, Cosslett, Atwood, Raphael-Leff). In examining the history of cultural attitudes to pain (in particular the practice of Twilight Sleep in the early 1910s and the 'myth of painless childbirth' that grew in popularity with the 1950s natural birth movement) the review brings together cultural analysis of how these attitudes served political and social agendas; how prevailing cultural attitudes are revealed not only about women, but about race and class. The review contains photographs of original 1950s newspaper cuttings and letters from the Wellcome Archive Library that give insight into popular attitudes about natural birth and the 'new' approach to 'painless birth' in the 1950s.

In an effort to develop a contemporary understanding of how the social and cultural constructions of the body interrelate in the context of birth, I look to the work of Judith Bulter, Pamela Klassen and Rachel Chadwick. I explore the arguments of these writers who consider 'the materiality of birth' and at the same time, aim to trace embodied aspects of birth with the understanding that there is no singular birthing body, that "the language spoken by the body, whether in pain, pleasure, or merely discomfort, is always a translation through a woman's layers of personal and psychic history and cultural values." (Pamela E.Klassen/ Sacred Maternities and Postbiomedical Bodies: Religion and Nature in Contemporary HomeBirth)