too posh to push?

Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice, the poster-girl for elective caesarean

In an increasingly technological and medicalized society, childbirth is becoming less about the 'miracle of life' and more about simply getting a baby out safely and without incident. And there is LOTS of debate over the benefits vs. harm of this fundamental change in childbirth.

'Natural' birth advocates talk about empowering women to make choices but actually all they’re doing is trying to impose an eco-feminist ideology that privileges a problematic ideal of the 'natural'. For some reason, tolerance and pluralism goes out the window when it comes to opinions on how to give birth, breast-feeding, raising kids.

From its Biblical origins, that childbirth pain is punishment for women’s inherent sinfulness, the assumption that women should find the physical pain of birth empowering, or that pain is somehow necessary to an ‘authentic’ experience of childbirth and womanhood,  romanticizes and essentializes women and promulgates a false moral superiority in refusing pain relief or having an operative delivery (Beckett 2005).

The inferred moral highground of ‘the natural’ infers that births which do not conform to the ‘natural’ ideal as being ‘unnatural’

The result of this valourization of 'the natural' is hardly feminist- 

it results in women  feeling guilt and  failure over having chosen an operative birth, receiving  medical  intervention during labour,or deciding to have an epidural.

 This TIME magazine article discussing the rise in the number of C-sections in the US in the last decade discusses one woman's decision to have an elective caesarean and the cultural pressure she felt to have a 'natural' delivery; "We put a lot of emotional, psychological and spiritual value around birthing," says Dr. William Callaghan, an obstetrician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But perhaps we are coming up with different cultural norms."

If feminists care about empowering women during child birth, they should do so in an evidence-based manner- The data demonstrate that the safest place to deliver is  in a medical environment.

As long as you’re not putting yourself or your baby’s life at immediate risk, you should be 

able to birth however you like and not have to justify it to anyone.

Oh, and you know what else is 'natural'? Small pox, that's what.

Beckett, K 2005, “Choosing Caesarean: Feminism and the politics of childbirth in the United States”, Feminist Theory, Vol.6, No.3, pp. 251-275.