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Laboring Women, Coaching Men: Masculinity and Childbirth Education in the Contemporary United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Carine M. Mardorossian
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Abstract

Hospitals have adopted a rhetoric of family-centered maternity care, and one of the ways in which they show their commitment to it is through the integration of the husband-as-coach model of childbirth (the Bradley method) into delivery practices. I argue that this model's widespread popularity testifies less to the culture's endorsement of a woman-centered approach than to healthcare's appropriation of “natural” childbirth as a site for the production and reproduction of patriarchal and capitalist power.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 18 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Women, Art, and Aesthetics , Fall 2003 , pp. 113 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Hypatia, Inc.

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