| Reply To Message: |
| Posted By |
70745 on 6/29/2008 6:19:56 PM |
| Subject: |
RE: The OB disinformation campaign |
| Message: |
OH my god has anyone been following the conversation at citypaper.com? I'm quoting our buddy Amy:
(Begin quote
"Grantly Dick-Read, the father of "natural" childbirth, made up his theory in order to convince white women of the "better" classes to have more children. He believe that if they could be convinced that the pain of childbirth was all in their heads, they would save the race by having more children. As he said:
"the mother is the factory, and by education and care she can be made more efficient in the art of motherhood"
According to the medical historian, Dr. Ornella Moscucci:
"The argument developed in Natural Childbirth and in its more famous sequel, Revelation of Childbirth (subsequently Childbirth Without Fear), mixed Darwinian themes, neurophysiological theories, and cultural stereotypes of childbirth among "primitive" people... Whether women experienced pain or not depended on cultural attitudes to childbirth rather than on some property inherent to parturition. Dick-Read ... claimed that primitives experienced easy, painless labours. This was because in primitive societies the survival value of childbirth was fully appreciated and labour was regarded as nothing more than "hard work" in the struggle for existence. In civilised societies on the other hand a number of cultural factors conspired to distort woman’s natural capacity for painless birth, producing in woman a fear of childbirth that hindered normal parturition...
To eliminate pain, the fear-tension-pain cycle must be broken ... Women had to be "tactfully, gradually and carefully initiated into the job they were about to perform". Education in the "facts" of natural childbirth and instruction in the methods of relaxation were the chief weapons in the battle against fear... According to Dick-Read, these psychological techniques would not only eliminate pain, but also shorten labour and reduce the need for surgical interference."
The idea that "primitive" women experience painless easy labors with excellent outcomes is nothing more than a racist, sexist stereotype."
End Quote.
OH MY GOD I'm horrified. Maybe I'm the last to hear this theory??? She can't REALLY believe that?!?!?!
Do you think she's spoken ever with women who have had un-intervened labors and deliveries? On second though..... do you think she's ever actually left her computer desk and smelled fresh air?
I thought that she was just a very strongly medical-model minded person on a mission, but seeing this makes me think she's absolutely lost her mind.
......She can't REALLY believe that, can she?! |
|