Abstract
This chapter puts contemporary concerns with traumatic birth in dialogue with historical evidence to illuminate continuities over time and to suggest sources of the intractability of women’s suffering. We marry two concepts—obstetric violence and epistemic violence—to inform our understanding of how power operates in maternity care. Drawing on evidence from Australian newspapers, magazines, oral testimonies, and qualitative survey data, we analyse examples of trauma and violence in birth from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. We argue that while the work of birth activists over decades has led to the elimination of numerous practices that undermined women’s agency, considerable work remains to ensure labouring women’s dignity and empowerment.
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Notes
- 1.
Kim Richards, ‘Birth S.O.S.,’ Melbourne’s Child, February 2018.
- 2.
For historical examinations of traumatic birth, see Paula A. Michaels, ‘Childbirth and Trauma, 1940s–1980s,’ Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 73, no. 1 (January 2018): 52–72, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrx054; Whitney Wood, ‘“Put Right Under”: Obstetric Violence in Post-War Canada,’ Social History of Medicine, August 30, 2018, hky057, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hky057.
- 3.
Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, ‘The Technocratic Model of Birth,’ in Feminist Theory in the Study of Folklore, ed. Susan Tower Hollis, Linda Pershing and M. Jane Young (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 297–326.
- 4.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-III (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1980). On the history of PTSD, see Hannah Decker, The Making of DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual’s Conquest of American Psychiatry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Gary Greenberg, The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2014); Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
- 5.
See, for example, Jenny Gamble and Debra Creedy, ‘Psychological Trauma Symptoms of Operative Birth,’ British Journal of Midwifery 13, no. 4 (2005): 218–224, https://doi.org/10.12968/bjom.2005.13.4.17981; J. Söderquist et al., ‘Risk Factors in Pregnancy for Post-traumatic Stress and Depression after Childbirth,’ BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology 116, no. 5 (2009): 672–680, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2008.02083.x; Grace Zimmerman, ‘Birth Trauma: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after Childbirth,’ International Journal of Childbirth Education 28, no. 3 (July 2013): 61–66; Madeleine Simpson and Christine Catling, ‘Understanding Psychological Traumatic Birth Experiences: A Literature Review,’ Women and Birth 29, no. 3 (June 2016): 203–207, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wombi.2015.10.009.
- 6.
Debra K. Creedy, Ian M Shochet and Jan Horsfall, ‘Childbirth and the Development of Acute Trauma Symptoms: Incidence and Contributing Factors,’ Birth 27, no. 2 (June 1, 2000): 104–111, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-536x.2000.00104.x.
- 7.
Joris F. G. Haagen et al., ‘PTSD after Childbirth: A Predictive Ethological Model for Symptom Development,’ Journal of Affective Disorders 185 (October 1, 2015): 135–143, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2015.06.049. See also Ben Shepherd, ‘Risk Factors and PTSD: A Historian’s Perspective,’ in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies, ed. Gerald M. Rosen (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2004), 39–61.
- 8.
Creedy, Shochet, and Horsfall, ‘Childbirth and the Development of Acute Trauma Symptoms,’ 108.
- 9.
Kerreen M. Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies: The Forgotten Women’s Movement (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
- 10.
Whitney Wood first suggested the utility of obstetric violence as an historical lens. See Wood, ‘“Put Right Under.”’
- 11.
Rogelio Pérez D’Gregorio, ‘Obstetric Violence: A New Legal Term Introduced in Venezuela,’ International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 111, no. 3 (2010): 201, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgo.2010.09.002.
- 12.
‘Obstetric Violence,’ May 28: International Day of Action for Women’s Health, 2014, http://www.may28.org/obstetric-violence/. See also The Prevention and Elimination of Disrespect and Abuse during Facility-based Childbirth (World Health Organization, 2014), http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/134588/1/WHO_RHR_14.23_eng.pdf?ua=1&ua=1.
- 13.
Joanna Erdman, ‘Bioethics, Human Rights, and Childbirth,’ Health and Human Rights 17, no. 1 (11 June, 2015): E43–E51; Camilla Pickles, ‘Reflections on Obstetric Violence and the Law: What Remains to be Done for Women’s Rights in Childbirth?’ Oxford Law Faculty, 3 March, 2017, https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-and-subject-groups/international-womens-day/blog/2017/03/reflections-obstetric-violence-and.
- 14.
See, for example, William Ray Arney, Power and the Profession of Obstetrics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press, 1975).
- 15.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London: Macmillan, 1988), 271–313.
- 16.
Thomas Teo has similarly sought to extend Spivak to the realm of medicine, specifically psychology. While crediting Spivak for inspiration, Teo argues that ‘to do justice to the methodological nature of the problem in the empirical sciences … the term epistemological violence is suggested.’ We choose not to follow his lead in this extension to obstetrics, despite its proximity to Teo’s work. Thomas Teo, ‘From Speculation to Epistemological Violence in Psychology: A Critical-Hermeneutic Reconstruction,’ Theory & Psychology 18, no. 1 (1 February, 2008): 57, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354307086922.
- 17.
See, for example, Astra, ‘Drugs Important in Childbirth,’ Sunday Times, 29 June, 1952; Ronald McKie, ‘A Night Inside a Maternity Hospital,’ Australian Women’s Weekly [hereafter AWW], 19 August, 1959. On post-war motherhood elsewhere, see Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Reprint ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Rebecca Jo Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Angela Davis, Modern Motherhood: Women and Family in England, c.1945–2000 (Manchester: University of Manchester, 2014).
- 18.
See, for example, Molly Dye, ‘Mothers and Nurses are Better off Now!,’ Daily Telegraph, 25 September, 1952; Evelyn Archer Adams, ‘Are Women’s Troubles out of Date?’ AWW, 1 June, 1960.
- 19.
Claire Randall, ‘“It’s Easy to Have a Baby!”’ Argus, 21 March, 1952; G. Fowler, ‘Natural Childbirth,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March, 1953; ‘Fear, Pain in Childbirth Reduced by “Read Method”,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 24 March, 1953; Medical Mother, ‘Childbirth Should Not be a Thing of Terror,’ Courier -Mail [hereafter CM], 9 January, 1953; ‘“Natural” Childbirth Now the Fashion Says Obstetrician,’ Newcastle Sun, 24 August, 1954; Barbara Hines, ‘Psychoprophylaxis. A Recipe for Birth without Fear,’ Canberra Times [hereafter CT], 3 December, 1969; Grantly Dick-Read, Natural Childbirth (London: Heinemann, 1933); Paula A. Michaels, Lamaze: An International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- 20.
Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies, 25. Emphasis in original.
- 21.
Mother of Three, ‘Too Much Unnecessary Horror with Childbirth,’ CM, 17 February, 1950.
- 22.
Ainsworth-Schofield, ‘Child-Birth Drama,’ Narrogin Observer, 5 March, 1954.
- 23.
On post-war psychiatry, see Joy Damousi, Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006).
- 24.
Medical Mother, ‘Childbirth Should Not Be a Thing of Terror.’
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Medical Mother, ‘Happy Event can be Happier Still,’ CM, 10 July, 1953.
- 27.
Medical Mother, ‘No Need to Fear “Having a Baby,”’ CM, 3 July, 1953.
- 28.
Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies, 25.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Jean Debelle, ‘Childbirth, 1970-Style,’ AWW, 25 November, 1970, 57.
- 31.
Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies.
- 32.
‘What Do You Think?’ AWW, 15 June, 1977, 5.
- 33.
Susan Duncan, ‘Childbirth as You Want It,’ AWW, 15 June, 1977, 4.
- 34.
Frédérick Leboyer, Birth without Violence, trans. Yvonne Fitzgerald (London: Pinter & Martin, 2011). Leboyer was not the first to express concern about the psychological impact of the journey through the birth canal. Psychoanalysts Otto Rank and Nandor Fodor had in the first half of the twentieth century argued that the fundamental psychic wound that scars all humankind is inflicted at the moment of expulsion from the womb and separation from the mother. Otto Rank, The Trauma of Birth (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929); Nandor Fodor, ‘The Trauma of Bearing,’ Psychiatric Quarterly 23, no. 1 (January 1949): 59–70.
- 35.
Suzanne Edgar, ‘Easy Now with the Baby,’ CT, 19 March, 1976.
- 36.
Margaret Sydney, ‘At Home,’ AWW, 21 January, 1976.
- 37.
Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies, 272.
- 38.
Bill Norma, ‘Doctors “Fail to Listen to” Patients,’ CT, 2 February, 1994.
- 39.
Jennifer Minns, ‘Caesareans Not a Cop-Out,’ CT, 3 March, 1995.
- 40.
Zena Armstrong, ‘Was Surgical Birth Right?’ CT, 19 March, 1988.
- 41.
Lynne Wintergreen, ‘Childbirth Trauma,’ CT, 1 March, 1988; Peter Clack, ‘Too Little, Too Late for PND Sufferers,’ CT, 9 November, 1992; John Kron, ‘A Silent Illness That Hits New Mothers,’ CT, 22 May, 1994.
- 42.
The survey was conducted by Nicole Highet through her role as the Executive Director of COPE.
- 43.
Elizabeth Sutton conducted the coding and initial data analysis as part of her postgraduate study at Monash University.
- 44.
Pseudonyms are used throughout to protect the identity of survey respondents.
- 45.
Meghan A. Bohren et al., ‘Continuous Support for Women during Childbirth [Systematic Review],’ Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2017, no. 7 (6 July, 2017): CD003766.
- 46.
Mary-Rose MacColl, The Birth Wars (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009), 192.
- 47.
Sheila Kitzinger, ‘Birth as Rape: There Must be an End to “Just in Case” Obstetrics,’ British Journal of Midwifery 14, no. 9 (1 September, 2006): 544–545, https://doi.org/10.12968/bjom.2006.14.9.21799.
- 48.
Joan B. Wolf, Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 32.
- 49.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2010 Australian National Infant Feeding Survey (Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 20 December, 2011), 7.
- 50.
See also Renata Kokanović, Paula A. Michaels and Kate Johnston-Ataata, eds., Paths to Parenthood: Emotions on the Journey through Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Early Parenthood (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
- 51.
Suzan Kardong-Edgren, ‘Using Evidence-based Practice to Improve Intrapartum Care,’ Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 30, no. 4 (1 July, 2001): 371–375, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1552-6909.2001.tb01555.x.
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Michaels, P.A., Sutton, E., Highet, N. (2019). Violence and Trauma in Australian Birth. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_11
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