Imagery and Symbolism in the Birth Practices of Traditional Cultures

Abstract

In many traditional societies the childbirth environment is considered to be more powerful psychologically than physically. Sexual, simulative and religious imagery is employed to influence the parturient woman's feelings about the birth as a positive and active experience. The psychological assumptions involved appear to differ from western "natural" childbirth, and suggest a more holistic approach to birth experience. (Birth 12:l Spring, 1985)

Postpartum hemorrhage in resource‐poor settings

“…In extremely remote or primitive regions, cultural beliefs combined with a lack of education often dictate a number of practices, including restrictive diet and activity during pregnancy [22]. Reliance on rituals, prayer or magic, and fear of medical personnel or technology is common in some regions and may delay or prevent expedient transport to a higher-level facility for bleeding [16,22,23]. In Nigeria, 17% of women brought to the hospital for complications during childbirth stated they avoided early care at the onset of labor for fear of forced tubal ligation [24].…”

Rumour of angels and heavenly midwives: Anthropology of transpersonal events and childbirth

“…In other situations the problems fear created were ameliorated through complex symbolic enactments that operate as waking suggestions to birth-giving mothers. 10,32,20 These ancient midwifery manoeuvres can include spirit-possession, and other NOSC. Because fertility and reproductive success were so crucial to our species' early survival we could surmise that the ritual practices of midwifery-as-spirit-possession and 'shamanism', may well have evolved in close association with our ancestors' birthing bodies and perhaps the NOSC associated with labour.…”

“…With this statement we see that the Church could not have sanctioned women's transpersonal states catalysed by birthing or the rituals that reproduce these states. 36,32,37 Such changes in consciousness are categorised in most cultures as direct 'unmediated' mystical experience. The socalled ''dissociation'' found among birth-giving women in all likelihood would have served an organic physiological 'rite' that had (and still has) the ability to take some women into a transpersonal revelation of self and, as transpersonal philosopher, Richard Tarnas puts it, ''radical kinship with the cosmos'' 38 A comforting source of women's authoritative knowledge--but a heresy for the Church--since no priestly order stands between 'God' and the parturient.…”

The Miracle Bearers: Narratives of Birthing Women and Implications for Spiritually Informed Social Work Practice

“…Indeed, even more recently, researchers are acknowledging that women's experiences of "personal and spiritual issues of power" are "absent from the conventional obstetrical literature on birth" (Klein, 2004, p. 162). Bates and Turner (2003) argue that Western industrial cultures with their focus on medical interventions to make childbirth safer and "more efficient" have done so at the "expense of any real consideration of the psychological and spiritual aspects of the childbirth experience" (p. 87).…”