Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology Book 11)

## Motherhood Issues THIS BOOK explores how women in the United States give religious meaning to the act of childbirth. It is at once a portrayal and a commentary on how contemporary women-from a wide range of religious identitiesreflect upon and practice the sacred in their procreative lives. Childbirth, the process of one body becoming two (or more), is an act of creation that leaves echoes in a woman's body and memory. In addition to this intimate sphere of body and memory are more public attempts to make meaning from childbirth. Medical and legal discourses, advice books, and even the cautionary tales of experienced women shape cultural perceptions of birth. Spanning the intimate and the public, childbirth has assumed a place alongside similarly politicized "motherhood issues" ranging from abortion to teen pregnancy. Over the past century North Americans have debated the meanings and practices of childbirth in the context of a society grappling with what it is to bear and raise children in a feminist, or at least feminist-influenced, age. These debates are not motherhood issues in the conventional sense of that phrase-that is, issues that bring forth only sanguine truisms or taken-for-granted agreement. Though without the media profile of other reproductive issues, childbirth has provoked impassioned controversy as many birthing women have critiqued and refused the model of medicalized birth that has become dominant in North America. The rise of midwifery care in hospitals, birthing centers, and homes testifies to the burgeoning success of these women's efforts to transform childbirth. The varied movements to reform childbirth in North America are not only about politics-they are not only about who holds the power in birth. They are also fundamentally about the meaning of birth to a woman's life and the life of her family and community. Since the early days of the post-World War II natural-childbirth movement in North America and the beginnings of the post-1960s home-birth movement, the luminaries of these movements-people like Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, author of Childbirth Without Fear, and midwife Ina May Gaskin, author of Spiritual Midwifery-have insisted that childbirth contains religious and spiritual meaning. They, and the women who have taken their books to heart, have viewed childbirth as a religious or spiritual process capable of provoking transformation for women, men, and babies alike.

Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act.

Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth—and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them—to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations—including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain—she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women.

What does home birth—a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control—mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation and motherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, Blessed Events challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is ''lived'' in contemporary America.

Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act.Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth -- and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them -- to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations -- including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain -- she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women.What does home birth -- a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control -- mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation andmotherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, Blessed Events challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is "lived" in contemporary America. IN A CHILD'S blue wading pool decorated with dolphins and fish, Simone Taylor, a small woman with the strong body of a runner and short blonde hair, sat naked in about six inches of warm water, hands on her pregnant belly. Pamela E. Klassen. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [285]-307) And Index.