Interrogating social conceptualizations of childbirth and gender

This dissertation draws on feminist theory and ecofeminist philosophy to examine the connections between understandings of women and nature and the construction of pervasive conceptualizations and practices of childbirth. It also examines the relationship between conceptualizations of men and masculinity, culture and nature, and childbirth. In order to conduct such an examination, this study explores the dominant Western discourse around gender and childbirth. Specifically, the work aims to identify prominent characteristics and themes related to childbirth in both popular culture, such as Hollywood films (Knocked Up, The Backup Plan), documentaries (The Business of Being Born), birth guides, magazines, news articles, websites, and scholarly, medical and alternative healthcare discourse. This work seeks to consider how various conceptualizations of childbirth are used to legitimate, or, alternately, to undermine, patriarchal gender norms such as emphasized femininity and patriarchal (hegemonic) masculinity and, more generally, what ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood calls "master consciousness" (Val Plumwood 1993), a way of understanding the world that is reliant on an unjustifiably dualistic thinking and that is responsible for fostering social practices of domination. In particular, this work seeks to determine to what extent is our conceptualization of childbirth, and subsequent practice, based on potentially erroneous presumptions about the hierarchical division between the realms of culture and nature and masculinity and femininity? Perhaps most importantly, this dissertation sets out to consider the implications of alternative conceptualizations of childbirth emerging in the context of the natural birth movement. Specifically, I aim to determine whether or not these alternatives interpretations of childbirth counteract patriarchal gender categories and the culture/nature dualism.