Born in the USA
Migrant cotton picker and her baby, Buckeye, AZ, 1940 (National Archives)
Very soon, BackStory will undergo its own rebirth as a weekly show. There are going to be some long, sleepless nights ahead making sure our little radio show gets off to a great start. We couldn’t be more excited.
In the meantime, we’re getting a little advice from Americans past. Coming soon: “Born in the USA” – a history of birth and babies.
We’ll talk about what to expect when you’re expecting in the 18th century, follow shifting opinions on when legal personhood begins, and trace the roots of the idea that newborn babies are innocent beings.
We want your questions and comments. How was your birth experience different than your mother’s or grandmother’s? Have you gone searching for birth records of your ancestors, and found something surprising? How has your identity, faith, or culture influenced how your family readied itself for a new baby? And what does it really mean to be born in the USA?
10 Responses
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DIGital HISTory :
[...] experts and significant players in American memory making. For example, the most recent episode “Born in the USA” featured an interview with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, whose work A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of [...]
Quote -- April 8, 2012 @ 3:52 pm -
Born in the USA | BackStory with the American History Guys :
[...] See the online discussion that helped shape this show. [...]
Quote -- May 15, 2012 @ 2:16 pm
I’m curious about how mobility has effected people’s ties to their place of birth. I come from a military family and my place of birth was just a layover between other destinations for my family. We relocated within a few months of my birth, I have no memories of it, no family there and no ties what so ever. I’m wondering if that’s a modern phenomenon or were previous generations just as mobile?
QuoteI think the biggest difference between my childbirth experiences (in 2005 and 2009) and that of my mother’s (1971) and her mother’s (early 1950s) was the involvement of the father in the process. I find it really interesting. In both my mom’s and grandmother’s day, men paced the waiting rooms waiting to receive word that they were fathers. The wait must have been agonizing. They played no role whatsoever in the birth process. Nowadays (most) fathers are involved in every step, from going to the doctor visits to being in the delivery room and playing hands-on role in labor and delivery. My husband was in the room, although he did do much but observe. In all honestly, he probably would have preferred to sit in the waiting room, but he would have been villified. You are considered a horrible father now if you don’t take an active role in every step of the pregnancy, labor and delivery. Quite a change from 40 years ago.
I’d love to see that aspect of it covered in your story. I eagerly await this episode. Keep up the good work!
Melanie
QuoteThe questions that immediately come to my mind revolve around how women’s own emotions about childbearing have changed throughout American history. Grantly Dick-Reed wrote “Childbirth Without Fear” in 1959 (and it strongly influenced my mother when she was pregnant with my older sister) but it seems American women in 2012 are possibly more afraid of childbirth than ever before. Was there ever a time that American women felt confident about their own bodies during childbirth? How did the move to hospitals, introduction of various interventions and medications affect American women’s self-confidence in the last century about their abilities to birth? I would love to know when it became the norm for American women to openly share their challenging, often traumatic birth stories with strangers while other women keep their “empowering”, “amazing”, “awesome” and even “fun” birth stories to themselves. Also, it seems to me that birth stories are often lost and many adults today do not know the story of their own birth.
I would also love to know what resembles Charlottesville’s Birth Circle (http://birthmattersva.org/charlottesville/) in American history. I can’t imagine women not coming together to talk pregnancy and childbirth, but how does it show up in the annals?
QuoteMy grandmother had one natural childbirth (with an OB in New York who must have been progressive, to have believe in natural childbirth in 1950), but she was not prepared for it and considered it the worst experience of her life. She went on to have three births with twilight sleep in Seattle and was totally satisfied with her lack of experience.
My mom wanted a wonderful AND natural experience while pregnant with me in 1977 and ended up with a cesarean at 44 weeks and an 11 pound baby. (She did have my dad at her side.) Nobody had wanted to induce her. Though that could have been a wonderful thing, it seems that she really was never going to labor sufficiently to deliver me. She went on to have two more cesareans and to find her voice with her third birth. It may have been a cesarean, but she insisted that her baby remain with her after being delivered and not whisked off to the nursery.
I agonized and worried about having a cesarean or a very challenging delivery due to fetal size. Instead, I delivered naturally a week early. I forgot drugs existed! I have had three natural, drug-free births since then. It’s not without it’s challenges, but I think that having a supportive doctor, husband, hospital, and doulas has really helped.
I am curious as to what kind of support women had in years past when they did not have their husband with them. Were they expected to deliver with no one they knew present? Did women try to fight this and bring female support with them?
QuoteYes, Grantly Dick-Read influenced women to have natural childbirth at a time when birth was very medicalized. His work influenced Marie Magden who developed Hypnobirthing. When I read the history of Birth, I see that women wanted to have interventions, that we have historically asked for them and then they become very “vogue.” The higher class women chose ether or c-section. It was a mark of class to have intervention. We are pulling ourselves of those days now. Still hard to believe that less than 1% have their babies at home. We are, as Michel Odent says, “like the traveler who has discovered they have gone the wrong way for too long.”
QuoteOver the years, I have found the words of my OB to be some of the wisest. During my first pregnancy I was full of questions: Is the baby turned right, Will I have a C-section, on and on and on. He finally looked at me and said, “Pregnancies are like a poker hand. You don’t know what you’ve got until the last card is PLAYED,” I have considered his remark and find it to be true. I consider the frontier woman throughout American history, many times alone during delivery, and realize how pampered and self-centered our society has become. As John Demos points out in his “Circle and Lines” series, most of western history has not been dominated by such considerations, but has been one of being a part of a larger whole. I believe this shift in thinking not only is reflected in the birthing process of today, but is also reflected in child rearing, school policies, and our society that has become “endowment” oriented.
QuoteI am a father. I was present at the birth of my daughter in 2000 at a hospital and with my son in 2006 at home (with a midwife — and my daughter who was 5 at the time.) We live in Pasadena, CA – so there are hospitals nearby. The nearest hospital has a dreadfully high rate of C-sections, so when my daughter was born we used an OB with a practice about 20 miles away who was affiliated with a hospital known for allowing a more natural experience. The birth was still fairly clinical, and while the three of us (my wife, daughter and I) spent our first night together as a family in the hospital being, we were woken more frequently than my daughter’s needs to nurse for another test or status check. Bleah!
We chose to have our son at home so that when he arrived we would all be home as a family. It was amazing to be together as a family *AT HOME*, the moment he arrived. We were only woken that night when my son needed to nurse and there was no anxiety of ‘would the Dr. let us go home today?’
I have seen that midwifery is alive and well, and fighting back against the attitude of birth as a “medical procedure”. Don’t count natural child birth as ‘not an option today’ just yet.
QuoteWhen my mother was in college in the 1950′s she read a novel with the quote, “Women pass down the fear and pain of childbirth to their daughters like a precious treasure.” She saw that and determined not to pass on the fear and pain that her own mother had given her. My grandmother had two twilight sleep births. When my mother gave birth to my older brother in 1959, she read the only book on the market at the time, Childbirth without Fear, by Grantly Dick-Reed. My parents drove to the next town over for the birth to be in a hospital that allowed fathers in the delivery room. My mother was a founding mother of La Leche League in my home town. I grew up surrounded my nursing mothers and talk of childbirth. I knew that childbirth is work, that is why it is called labor. For my own children I had five natural births at home or something close to it. (My second was born at a hotel and we planned that.) I am so grateful to my mother for the heritage she has given me, it has inspired me to be a midwife.
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