RE: Medicalization of Pregnancy and Childbirth: The History of Midwives To A Male Dominated Doctoral Profession
Greetings, my friend @marxrab,
You've hit on a topic that I also find fascinating as well as quite disturbing.
I've never before encountered the term "medicalization" but it immediately makes perfect sense. I've also not before had such a clarifying mental spotlight cast on the specific example of pregnancy and childbirth as something that has been wrenched from the realm of "normal" and re-cast into a medical context.
Growing up as I have in a society where the medicalization of pregnancy had already occurred, seeing things from that perspective seemed so normal. I have for some time been attracted to news and stories of midwives, and I even know a fine and successful midwife personally. However, I've never quite been able to clearly state what went wrong.
Thanks to your article, I now see and understand the transition from treating pregnancy as normal to treating it as something abnormal. I now understand the matter more clearly and in a way that I will from now on be able to verbalize. Thank you!
I'm sorry I missed voting for your earlier article, but I shall remedy that... ;)
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Thank you for the comment. You dont' have to worry about voting. I just love getting a single comment from you because they are always so great to read. Medicalization is a subject I find fascinating and I did a lot of research on it in college. In modern times is a pretty common thing. I wrote about it in the article I listed at the bottom of the post. The medical industry is big business so taking normal things and turning them into medical issues happens all the time for the sake of making money. It's also a great way to control patients by making them trust medical professionals over alternative sources even though doctors don't always have the best answers but the answers that help the business aspect function. Pregnancy is interesting because of the move to put it back into the hands of women with the return of midwives, home births, alternative birthing methods, etc. This is 3 parter so I'll touch on that stuff in a later post.