Spring Break
Choices available for next step in life
Rachel Spitler
Issue date: 5/30/08 Section: Forum
Her "condition" isn't a contrived plot point; it's just a human state, part of the normal transition period between having two kids and having three kids.
I'm happy that depictions like this are starting to become more common. I hope they continue enough to finally balance out that strange period of stock-characterization.
It would be fun to see more movies like "Juno" - there's a huge and nearly untapped potential here for the "pregnancy comedy" as a subgenre. That would be interesting to see.
Getting back to real life, though, I am also happy to have learned from my midwife friend that, as time goes on, women are gaining more and more options about exactly how pregnancies are managed and monitored, not to mention how they give birth.
We've come a long way from the mid-1900s, when childbirth practices were geared almost entirely toward the convenience of doctors rather than the benefit of mothers.
It was popular then to tie a woman in labor down with straps and to give her drugs like ether as a matter of course. When my oldest brother was born, my dad wasn't even allowed in the delivery room until well after the process was complete.
These things have changed, but we've still got a long way to go. It remains common for women to unquestioningly deliver on their backs, struggling upward against gravity and for procedures like episiotomy to be performed even when they're not strictly necessary.
Historically, most movements for reproductive justice have been primarily concerned with abortion and contraception rather than with actually having babies. My women studies class talked a little about the "medicalization" of birth, and its treatment by professionals as almost a disease, but the story of how that's been fought against is harder to track than most of the rest of feminist history.
However it happened, things have gotten better.
We are now living in a pretty remarkable time and place for giving birth, one in which someone like me can look up and down a vast scale of options.
I'm happy that depictions like this are starting to become more common. I hope they continue enough to finally balance out that strange period of stock-characterization.
It would be fun to see more movies like "Juno" - there's a huge and nearly untapped potential here for the "pregnancy comedy" as a subgenre. That would be interesting to see.
Getting back to real life, though, I am also happy to have learned from my midwife friend that, as time goes on, women are gaining more and more options about exactly how pregnancies are managed and monitored, not to mention how they give birth.
We've come a long way from the mid-1900s, when childbirth practices were geared almost entirely toward the convenience of doctors rather than the benefit of mothers.
It was popular then to tie a woman in labor down with straps and to give her drugs like ether as a matter of course. When my oldest brother was born, my dad wasn't even allowed in the delivery room until well after the process was complete.
These things have changed, but we've still got a long way to go. It remains common for women to unquestioningly deliver on their backs, struggling upward against gravity and for procedures like episiotomy to be performed even when they're not strictly necessary.
Historically, most movements for reproductive justice have been primarily concerned with abortion and contraception rather than with actually having babies. My women studies class talked a little about the "medicalization" of birth, and its treatment by professionals as almost a disease, but the story of how that's been fought against is harder to track than most of the rest of feminist history.
However it happened, things have gotten better.
We are now living in a pretty remarkable time and place for giving birth, one in which someone like me can look up and down a vast scale of options.
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Dann Cutter
posted 5/30/08 @ 7:31 AM PST
Bwahahaha... options? Tons. Smart. No way in heck.
I've one through this... well, as close as any guy ever can. You will have many many feelings. But you will NEVER feel smart. (Continued…)
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