Cultures of Childbirth

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Significant anthropological research has revealed widely different ideas of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care in cultures around the world. The history of childbirth in the US includes a clear trend of increasing medicalization and periods of eugenic population manipulation including forced sterilization. Scriptural traditions, poetry, and fiction can give us culturally-diverse visions of the meaning of childbirth. Cultural tropes and metaphors can be found in discussions or taboos around conception, pregnancy, abortion, birth, infant and maternal death, and infant feeding.