A Cross-Cultural View of Birth
Sheila Kitzinger

Other birth cultures are often discussed in terms of how they differ from the norm. Their practices and beliefs are of concern because they present problems for care-givers in modern hospitals. Yet the technocratic model of birth is an aberration from the social model that is, and has been historically in the West too, traditional in widely diverse cultures.

Creation is a sacred act and it is believed that birth only goes well when spiritual elements are acknowledged.

Each birth is also a social process that draws together and integrates women in the community, and through them the entire neighbourhood. It takes place in a domestic setting, in space controlled by women, who are the main or sole care -givers. The exclusion of men often has the force of taboo.

The midwife is one of a group of women companions who come together for the birth to sustain and nurture the mother, and knowledge is shared. The midwife orchestrates the drama of birth. She has a multi-functional role, giving her empirical skills, and also bearing spiritual responsibility to shepherd the baby from the world of the ancestors to that of the living community, and to guide the woman over the bridge to motherhood, able to accept responsibility for a new life.

Birth is perceived as activity. The mother is not a passive patient. She is helped to move around and is supported in upright postures, encouraged by the helping women, who may rock and move with her in a birth dance.

In Europe the male barber-surgeons of the 17th Century introduced a new technology of birth and a fragmented perception of the female body. As men took over the management of childbirth a woman's body was subjected to many invasive procedures, which brought with them new reproductive hazards.

In cultures world-wide midwives are specialists in touch. Touch is used in medicalised birth too, but in contrasting ways and conveying a different message. When sophisticated technology is employed, touch may not take place at all, and machines replace the human hand.

The clock, the oldest technology of all, is the basis for the technocratic management of birth. Women are systematically trained, if unintentionally, to distrust their bodies and surrender responsibility for them.