Post five - technology and identity.

I am doing my seminar presentation this week on Kerreen Reiger and Rhea Dempsey’s article, Performing Birth in a Culture of Fear: an embodied crisis of late modernity. It relates to our week 9 topic on sexualized technologies – surgery, sexuality and identity. I’ve found that some of the points they raise and arguments they make really resonate with me, as my own social experience is beginning to include friends who have children. Many of these new parents have experienced several facets of a ‘medicalised’ birth experience, with differing levels of agency and understanding in the process, as well as differing levels of interest in the possibility of performing choice and decision making in this process.

Reiger and Demspey argue that childbirth is both collectively and individually performed, and explore the interplay between the physiological processes of birth and the internalization of cultural norms. This manifests in the level of non-critical medical ‘intervention’ present in the birthing processes, with the intimation in the article that intervention is the delivery of medical processes, such as drugs, surgery or machine monitoring, that are not sought by a labouring woman but pushed by care attendants, possibly acting out of institutional power relations. In doing so, a cultural norm is enacted – that is, ceding agency to a perceived authority, in this case, medical staff.

This is not to say that in some circumstances, medical authority, guidance and decision making should not be relied upon. However, in many non-critical circumstances, the interaction and support of birthing partners and caregivers can influence the agency of a woman’s capacity to endure. Reiger and Dempsey note “expressions of concern, anxiety and sympathy reiterate and therefore enact a perception that women ‘can’t do it anymore’ “ (p. 371).

The article states there is a cultural norm of anxiety and fear surrounding birth in Western culture, that is both reflected and constructed by the media (p. 365). Expectations of the process are further tangled with the West’s preoccupation with celebrity and body image (p.366), and the modern reliance on technological solutions to problems. In the United States research on birthing trends shows this reliance is leading to rising rates of caesarean delivery, with a 10% jump in rates in the 10 year period from 1997-2007.

 

Feminist critiques of birthing advocate arguments against a reliance on ‘technological birthing’ argue that many of these ideals are essentialist, moralizing and patronizing of women’s choices (p. 366), reducing women to an innate blueprint of ‘primal woman’, or ‘mother’. My own opinion is that, psychological, as well as physical, preparedness affects the physiological act of birth, including the preparedness of birthing support partners. The right to access non-critical caesarean or epidural should absolutely be a woman’s choice, however many of the technologies – drugs and surgery – affect recovery times, and should be fully understood before labour begins.

Reference

Reiger, K & Dempsey, R 2006, ‘Performing Birth in a Culture of Fear’, Health Sociology Review, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 363-373.