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Grace Whitbeck

Culture, Pregnancy, and Birth (WGST 388)

26 September 2017

Reflection 1

This book provided me with a lot of new incite regarding the varying processes and

views of childbirth and pregnancy across cultures. I learned a lot of new information about the

influence of culture on varying societal perceptions of pregnancy, health, and medicine. For

example, I didn’t know it was possible to correct or improve the health and position of a fetus by

non-medicinal techniques, including massaging and manipulating or moving the position of the

mother during birth. Before reading this book I was completely unaware of the specific and non-

interventionist ways of providing care to pregnant mothers, nor how helpful they are during the

birth process. Jordan (1993) details the extent to Doña Juana’s skills in chapter two as she states:

The massage is an integral part of Doña Juana’s skills. She gives not only prenatal

massages but also various types of curative and diagnostic massages to both men and

women. Thus, she will apply her skilled hands to sore muscles, sprains, abdominal

trouble, and non-specific complaints, as when a person “just doesn’t feel well”. (p. 26)

This leads into my second revelation after reading this book: pregnancy can either be treated as a

normal part of life or a pathological condition. In the Yucatan, women treat pregnancy as an

ordinary walk of life, as displayed in the above quote that displays an equivocal level of training

necessary to care for common soreness as well as pregnancy. I was aware that American

medicine focuses a lot more on drug use and technological treatments than holistic, herbal, or

non-intrusive remedies; however, I did not know that although 25% of pregnancies are actually

emergency circumstances, American doctors treat 100% of pregnant mothers as if they are in
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need of emergency care. In chapter 5, Jordan (1993) lists the standard list of complex practices

including induction, chemical stimulation of labor, surgical rupturing of the membranes, routine

episiotomies, the lithotomy position for delivery, heavy reliance on cesarean sections, and the

administration of analgesics and anesthetics, all of which require the presence of a physician for

birth (p. 124). Not only is the American system more reliant on technology than is necessary, we

actually have obtained a cyclical way of providing care, so American patients are reliant on this

kind of intensive process. I found it very interesting that even in other developed countries, such

as Sweden and Holland, although technological methods and anesthetics are used, the patients

are far more informed and aware of the process of birthing, their available choices, their bodies,

and what each possible drug will do. With that, each culture has their own method of informing

mothers of the birthing process. For example, I learned that Yucatan women are not allowed to

see or learn of the process of birthing until they go through it themselves. This leads to the idea

that different cultures possess different learning methods: whereas American students learn by

lecture, memorization, and exams, Yucatan women learn in a more effective manner through

experience. During her fieldwork, Jordan (1993) explains the global lack of understanding of the

importance of varying learning techniques:

I will argue that one crucial reason for the failure of training programs lies in

fundamentally different means of knowledge acquisition: the didactic mode of formal

teaching which is used in western-style training, and the experiential mode of

apprenticeship learning to which midwives are accustomed. (p. 186)

Furthermore, the issue described above uncovers the immense problem of authoritative

knowledge and the general lack of value for the knowledge acquired and practiced regarding

medical care and the birthing process in lesser developed countries.

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After reading this book, my thinking has changed to be a lot more curious about other

cultures and the care they practice regarding birth. I have adopted a much more sensitive

understanding of the variance in knowledge, learning methods, and perspectives and practices of

medical care cross culturally. Overall, I now see a huge need for more developed and lesser

developed countries to learn from one another, instead of just relying on the expansion of

technologically advanced methods that are not always the most helpful method. In my opinion,

authoritative knowledge is the greatest plague that any nation could suffer from, and there is a lot

for the United States to learn as far as providing and extending the most helpful, most holistic,

and least intrusive care before, during, and after childbirth. As displayed through the entirety of

Jordan’s (1993) writing, childbirth is (and should be treated as) a natural process that has been

occurring for thousands of years. Therefore, to me it seems to be harmful to the body and soul to

provide care that reflects the isolated and technologically dependent state of the United States

over adopting, or at least considering, the organic and communally centered process of birth that

occurs lesser developed countries.

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References

Jordan, Brigette (1993). Birth In Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in

Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press,

Inc.