Pain Relief in Childbirth: Changing Historical and Feminist Perspectives

Ga, Skowronski

doi:10.1177/0310057x150430s106

Cited by 25 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The introduction of ether and later chloroform in the 19th century led to labour analgesia becoming increasingly popular among those who could afford it, driven by economic progress in industrializing countries. However, inhalation of systemic analgesic agents during labour was linked to deaths of mothers and neonates, 18 and the prevalence of labour analgesia therefore remained low until the beginning of the 20th century. After the introduction of epidural analgesia, first used in labour in the 1940s, this safe and effective technique soon became widely adopted where it was available and affordable and infrequently used in developing and resource-poor countries with inadequate health systems 18 …”

Section: Access To Labour Analgesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the provision of analgesia during childbirth, Japan

Maeda

Takahashi

Yamamoto

et al. 2019

Bull. World Health Organ.

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Japan’s universal health-care system means that it is a very safe country in which to give birth. Perinatal outcomes in Japan are excellent, with low infant mortality and neonatal mortality. However, childbirth remains a challenge for many Japanese women, who are faced with a scarcity of places to give birth, limited availability of analgesia and social norms that favour natural birth. The number of birth facilities in Japan continues to decrease as fewer children are born. The numbers of qualified medical staff remain inadequate, with a continuing lack of female physicians, perpetuated by a pervasive negative gender bias. Recruitment efforts are underway, but few doctors want to specialize in obstetrics or gynaecology. Furthermore, around half of female obstetricians and gynaecologists in Japan’s male-dominated medical system stop practising when they have their own children. The difficulty of obtaining analgesia during labour is another problem. Although low uptake of labour pain relief in Japan is said to be due to cultural influences, the root of the problem is a lack of qualified anaesthesiologists and the inflexibility of a system that will not allow other staff to be trained to administer labour analgesia. Problems with labour anaesthesia have been linked to 14 maternal deaths since 2010. Japanese policy-makers need to act to renovate the nation’s obstetric facilities, reorganize regional perinatal care systems, train more obstetricians and anaesthesiologists, promote task-shifting and better integrate biomedical and traditional, non-medical care for pregnant women.

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Section: Access To Labour Analgesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the provision of analgesia during childbirth, Japan

Maeda

Takahashi

Yamamoto

et al. 2019

Bull. World Health Organ.

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“…Second wave feminism has also influenced how women perceive birth [61]. Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist activity and thought that began in the early 1960s.…”

Section: Social Construction Of Birth and Birth Painmentioning

confidence: 99%

Jordanian women’s experiences and constructions of labour and birth in different settings, over time and across generations: A qualitative study

Hussein

Dahlen

Ogunsiji

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background: Overwhelmingly, women in Middle Eastern countries experience birth as dehumanising and disrespectful.Aim: To examine Jordanian women’s experiences and constructions of labour and birth in different settings (home, public and private hospitals in Jordan, and Australian public hospitals), over time and across generations. Method: A qualitative interpretive design was used. Data were collected by face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 27 Jordanian women. Of these women, 20 were living in Jordan (12 had given birth in the last five years and eight had birthed over 15 years ago) while seven were living in Australia (with birthing experience in both Jordan and Australia). Interview data were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.Results: Women’s birth experiences differed across settings and generations and were represented in the four themes: ‘Home birth: a place of comfort’; ‘Public Hospital: it’s what you do’; ‘Private Hospital: buying control’ and ‘Australian maternity care: a mixed experience’. In each theme, the concepts: Pain, Privacy, the Personal and to a lesser extent, Purity (cleanliness), were present but experienced in different ways depending on the setting (home, public or private hospital) and the country.Conclusions: The findings demonstrate how meanings attributed to labour and birth, particularly the experience of pain, are produced and reproduced in different settings, providing insights not only into the medical and institutional management of birth, but also the social context influencing decision-making around birth in Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries. In the public hospital environment in Jordan, women were treated in a dehumanised way with no privacy, no support for people and no access to the pain relief they wanted. This was in stark contrast to women birthing at home only one generation before. Change is urgently needed to offer humanised birth in the Jordanian maternity system,

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“…Further development of methods of pain relief in labour sought to allow women to retain consciousness during birth but with the diminution or loss of sensation, either through the administration of epidural anaesthesia that blocks the nerve endings below the waist, or through the refinement of the use of ‘milder’ methods of pain relief such as nitrous oxide that diminish the sensation of pain yet do not fully eliminate it (Skowronski, 2015). The introduction of effective methods of pain relief was pivotal in moving birth from home to hospital, a significant social and spatial shift in birth practice.…”

Section: Pain As Moral Burdenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labour Pain, ‘Natal Politics’ and Reproductive Justice for Black Birth Givers

Fannin

2019

Body & Society

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The reception of Elaine Scarry’s landmark text, The Body in Pain, focuses in part on exploring how pain might be understood as beneficial or therapeutic. Childbirth is often cited as the paradigmatic instance of this kind of beneficial pain. This essay examines conceptualizations of labour pain in biomedical, natural childbirth and reproductive justice movements that explore the limits of Scarry’s description of pain as ‘unshareable’. Political struggles over pain in childbirth centre on the legibility of pain in labour. Feminist and natural childbirth activists have developed an understanding of pain at birth as central to maternal subjectivity, where pain is a biopolitical force and its management a means of self-transformation. Alongside calls for reproductive justice, the essay considers how the visibility and expressivity of labour pain could contribute to what Imogen Tyler and Lisa Baraitser term a new ‘natal politics’ that addresses concerns for the disproportionate injury and death experienced by Black birth givers.

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Pain Relief in Childbirth: Changing Historical and Feminist Perspectives

Cited by 25 publications

References 19 publications

Factors affecting the provision of analgesia during childbirth, Japan

Factors affecting the provision of analgesia during childbirth, Japan

Jordanian women’s experiences and constructions of labour and birth in different settings, over time and across generations: A qualitative study

Labour Pain, ‘Natal Politics’ and Reproductive Justice for Black Birth Givers

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