The Birthing Process
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In Birth as an American Rite of Passage, Robbie E. Davis-Floyd (1992) contends that the birthing process in the U.S. is the effort by the technocratic society to control a natural act (p. 2). According to her, the birthing process should be considered a rite of passage because it sends a powerful message to the women, "the initiates," that the technocratic institutions are superior to their natural capacities (Davis-Floyd, 1992, p. 16). Fundamentally, Davis-Floyd (1992) highlights the fact that woman's creative power is usurped by the hospital and technology. Instead of being celebrated as a life-giver, she is disempowered and made to feel helpless and dependent on them (pp. 74-5). From the technocratic perspective, women's bodies are regarded as entities that are likely to fail and need to be fixed during the birthing process (David-Floyd, 1992, p. 54). To support her main arguments, Davis-Floyd uses a wide variety of sources. Regarding the perspective of doctors towards pregnancies, she cites articles from prestigious medical journals and books on pregnancies and birthing written by doctors. These writings illuminate the obstetricians' complete reliance on technology and their belief in the necessity of using technology to control the birthing process (Davis-Floyd, 1992, pp. 54-5). One of her most powerful ways of demonstrating the imposition of the hospital staff and the technology on the women is her presentation of four perspectives: "Official Rationale," "Physiologi
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to pressures by doctors and nurses who claim that they know better and are doing their best when they administer these procedures.
Her discussion of the different belief systems towards births provides a vivid contrast to the technocratic model used in the hospitals. While women are often made to feel that they should trust the hospital staff and the machines more than themselves, the alternative models show that the birthing process can occur in a different way within another context. For example, the wholistic model takes an antithetical perspective to that of the technocratic model. While the technocratic model emphasizes the technology, the wholistic model celebrates the intuitive relationship between the mother and the child. The empowering process for the women can be seen in this description: "ą there will be no conflictą between the emotional need of the motherą and the safety of the child,ą so that what is good for one is good for the other" (Davis-Floyd, 1992, p. 157).
In spite of her bias towards a natural childbirth, Davis-Floyd provides an understanding analysis of why many women choose to go to the hospitals to give birth. She places the birthing experience within the historical context of the changes in the wo
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Approximate Word count = 1419
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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