Comprehending The Unknown

It is admittedly very difficult and often overwhelming to fully understand something that you will never experience. That is obviously the case for myself (as a male) and childbirth. You can watch, read, ask, analyze--ultimately it is impossible to know what it’s really like. But this weeks’ readings added interesting and varying perspectives on health outcomes of birthing and the social and medical tendencies that come along with it.

Kola’s piece provided an interesting overlay for the the case studies and personal anecdotes that followed. I certainly related to many of the assertions that Kola writes. Doctors and the field of medicine often(sometimes always) influence our decision-making and self-punishment for other areas of our social life. When we get sick, it is entirely natural to think “why me?”--and usually the only way we can figure it out is by diagnosing the personal flaws in our daily life. And so often medicine and more specifically the medical field is trying to decide what makes us “better” in many different aspects that go much beyond health.

I appreciated that Kola admitted that the “medicalization of society” has been “as much a result of medicine’s potential as it is of society’s wish for medicine to use that potential.”(500) Especially in a privatized healthcare system, patients will decide how much power and influence medical specialists have, and that leads to both good and bad outcomes.

Zola’s argument is interesting when considered with Johnson et al’s reading on the Dutch Perception of Childbirth. The Dutch’s view of childbirth--that it is a natural occurrence that should remain as simply as possible--clearly affects the outcomes and successes that Dutch mothers have.

It was interesting that they noted the Dutch mothers were much more prepared and relaxed for childbirth because many mothers educated themselves through classes, breathing techniques and various books+television programs. I couldn’t help but think that Kola would have said that this was a cultural and societal repercussion of medical intervention. If the mothers are taking things into their own hands to prepare, then this puts the onus back onto the individual; something I had thought Zola was arguing against.

Of course these are preventative measures that the Dutch encourage, and that is the real difference in the “personal responsibility” category when comparing U.S. and Dutch childbirth.

The Dutch allow mothers to decide on how they want to partake in their childbirth. This was the exact opposite in Lori and Boyle’s case study for mothers in Liberia. Their limited overall status and societal affect on decision making left outcomes out of their own hands. Rather than consulting with other mothers, there was an intense amount of secrecy surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. I also connected the belief that some have supernatural powers in Liberian society to that of our own. While likely on a smaller scale, I think even in the U.S. many people think that they simply do not have the ability to be as healthy as others.

The final story by Fadiman encompases many of the themes from the other readings and puts them into a personal story. Clearly, Foua had much different experiences during childbirth due to the cultural differences. While most of my time with these readings was a complicated and often unsuccessful attempt to relate, I think a few things came away strongest. Power structures are crucial in the outcomes of medicine and childbirth. Should we give that power to the government, to the private market, or to the mothers? I don’t know. As Johnson et al wrote, it’s impossible to simply take a system that is working and put it into another culture, because there are surely going to be different outcomes. But they highlighted the opportunity we have even in our current structure to influence policy making and program design.