Who's Having This Baby

Drawing on a richly diverse collection of more than 130 interviews, this book brings to life the nagging question of just who is having this baby, anyway? Though the birthing process is framed and handled differently from country to country, even from region to region, the prevailing norm situates b [...]
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Drawing on a richly diverse collection of more than 130 interviews, this book brings to life the nagging question of just who is having this baby, anyway? Though the birthing process is framed and handled differently from country to country, even from region to region, the prevailing norm situates birth in hospitals, managed by doctors and nurses who rely on a variety of technologies to assist them. Medical institutions, rather than women, control the birth experience. In this book five authors use multidisciplinary approaches to examine verbal birthing narratives. A rhetorician investigates power relations among all people involved in the birthing process. A historian exposes the history of how women's bodies have been viewed and scripted according to the logic of an assembly line. In its conclusion, this work argues that women should become active participants in their own birthing experiences, and that care-giving systems should change to accommodate women during birth.