• Childbirth and feminism

    Date: 2011.09.02 | Category: Birth | Tags:

    Childbirth has a bad reputation. Many people, including women, and including women who have given birth, see labor and birth as a painful ordeal that may just be the most painful experience in a woman’s life. Women in labor are portrayed as hysterical, in pain, and afraid. Actors often hurl insults at their “husbands” during labor scenes, and are shown as nearly having lost their ability to think rationally.

    Is labor really that painful? And if it is, as some women have certainly experienced, why are women portrayed as not being able to cope with the pain? It is, I believe, because of the fact that women are seen as weak and incompetent. Childbirth, one of the few acts that are truly unique to women, is marketed as something that that women cannot handle alone – as something that requires medical professionals, and most often men, to save the day.

    Although painless or nearly painless childbirth is indeed possible, here I am not addressing the issue of pain itself. Instead, I am talking about the notion that pain is not something women – because of their perceived weak nature – can cope with very well. Likewise, the belief that women in the throws of labor all but lose their minds is misogynist in nature.

    Childbirth may be painful for many women, and many may even turn into themselves to concentrate on the task at hand. Women are more than strong enough to deal with labor and birth, however, and even if large numbers will opt for pain relief, that does not mean they are too weak to deal with a little pain, that lasts for a relatively short time.

    It’s funny; women dealing with tough pregnancy symptoms are often told to “suck it up” because it’s normal, and even women who are so sick they can barely function due to hyperemesis gravidarum are told they are whining. Childbirth is different, for some reason.

    Let me tell you, women in labor don’t suddenly lose their intelligence or their ability to act, and women generally handle pain in a much more “manly” way than men. Childbirth is not something that requires men to save helpless, incompetent, desperate women. We can do it!