Socio-Cultural Insights of Childbirth in South Asia

Socio-Cultural Insights of Childbirth in South Asia
Author: Sabitra Kaphle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000417018

This book analyses the significant socio-cultural factors impacting childbirth experiences of women living in remote and complex social settings. This book challenges the notion that childbirth is a universal biological event which women experience in their reproductive lives and provides an in-depth social perspective of understanding childbirth. Drawing on evocative stories of women living in the Himalayas, the author discusses how childbirth should be supported to enable women to take control and ownership of their experiences. Based on extensive research undertaken in remote mountain regions of Nepal, the book provides evidence for and discussion of childbirth in the context of other countries, cultures and communities. Utilising a feminist perspective, this book critiques medical control of childbirth and argues in favour of giving power to women so that they can make decisions which are right for them. In doing so, the author unpacks complexities associated with women’s lives in remote communities and highlights the significance of addressing broader determinants impacting birth outcomes and valuing childbirth traditions to ensure cultural safety for women, families and societies. Through exploring the wide range of factors influencing women and their childbirth experiences, this book offers a new model for childbirth that policy makers, practitioners, communities, educators, researchers and other professionals can use to make childbirth an empowering experience for women. It will be of interest to academics and professionals in the fields of public health, midwifery, health promotion, sociology and South Asian Studies.

Childbirth in South Asia

Childbirth in South Asia
Author: Clemence Jullien
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2021-08
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780190130718

Across the world, the conditions of childbirth are changing but not all in the same direction. Women in Western countries press for more home deliveries, and to confront some of the effects of the over-medicalisation of motherhood. Most developing countries, by contrast, promote deliveries in clinics and hospitals, and stigmatize women who deliver at home. Mobile phones and social media are pressed into service to identify high-risk mothers and to offer them pregnancy and delivery advice. All of the South Asian countries have been accused of neglecting childbirth and women's healthcare. The Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015) prompted important new Government schemes across South Asia, designed to address the issues of safe motherhood and childbirth. The Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) now mandate further efforts to reduce maternal and neo-natal mortality. This book illustrates the continuing paradoxes as well as the new challenges linked to childbirth in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It brings together anthropologists, historians, and sociologists who reflect on the implications of these new schemes for women's own experiences.

Daughters of Hariti

Daughters of Hariti
Author: Santi Rozario
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134471343

Hariti is the ancient Indian goddess of childbirth and women healers, known at one time throughout South and Southeast Asia from India to Nepal and Bali. Daughters of Hariti looks at her 'daughters' today, female midwives and healers in many different cultures across the region. It also traces the transformation of childbirth in these cultures under the impact of Western biomedical technology, national and international health policies and the wider factors of social and economic change. The authors ask what can be done to improve the high rates of maternal and infant deaths and illnesses still associated with childbirth in most societies in this area and whether the wholesale replacement of indigenous knowledge by Western biomedical technology is necessarily a good thing.

Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (Volume 2)

Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (Volume 2)
Author: Robert Black
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2016-04-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1464803684

The evaluation of reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) by the Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (DCP3) focuses on maternal conditions, childhood illness, and malnutrition. Specifically, the chapters address acute illness and undernutrition in children, principally under age 5. It also covers maternal mortality, morbidity, stillbirth, and influences to pregnancy and pre-pregnancy. Volume 3 focuses on developments since the publication of DCP2 and will also include the transition to older childhood, in particular, the overlap and commonality with the child development volume. The DCP3 evaluation of these conditions produced three key findings: 1. There is significant difficulty in measuring the burden of key conditions such as unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, nonsexually transmitted infections, infertility, and violence against women. 2. Investments in the continuum of care can have significant returns for improved and equitable access, health, poverty, and health systems. 3. There is a large difference in how RMNCH conditions affect different income groups; investments in RMNCH can lessen the disparity in terms of both health and financial risk.

Birth on the Threshold

Birth on the Threshold
Author: Cecilia Coale Van Hollen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2003-10-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 052093539X

Even childbirth is affected by globalization—and in India, as elsewhere, the trend is away from home births, assisted by midwives, toward hospital births with increasing reliance on new technologies. And yet, as this work of critical feminist ethnography clearly demonstrates, the global spread of biomedical models of childbirth has not brought forth one monolithic form of "modern birth." Focusing on the birth experiences of lower-class women in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Birth on the Threshold reveals the complex and unique ways in which modernity emerges in local contexts. Through vivid description and animated dialogue, this book conveys the birth stories of the women of Tamil Nadu in their own voices, emphasizing their critiques of and aspirations for modern births today. In light of these stories, author Cecilia Van Hollen explores larger questions about how the structures of colonialism and postcolonial international and national development have helped to shape the form and meaning of birth for Indian women today. Ultimately, her book poses the question: How is gender—especially maternity—reconfigured as birth is transformed?

Wombs in Labor

Wombs in Labor
Author: Amrita Pande
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231538189

Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, Pande's research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of India's larger labor system. Pande's interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of India's surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.

Arias' Practical Guide to High-Risk Pregnancy and Delivery - E-Book

Arias' Practical Guide to High-Risk Pregnancy and Delivery - E-Book
Author: Fernando Arias
Publisher: Elsevier Health Sciences
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 8131238768

Thoroughly revised edition of this well-known text is prompted by the popularity of the previous edition among both students and practitioners. The revised edition has been endeavoured keeping the key objective of Dr Fernando Arias alive—to provide Obs & Gynae residents, fellows in Maternal–Fetal Medicine, obstetricians, general physicians and interested nurses and medical students with a source of practical information about complications of pregnancy.• Most of the chapters have been completely re-written. • A new chapter 'Impact of Advances in Genetics on Prenatal Diagnosis' has been added, which does justice to the enormous advances in the field of Prenatal Genetics in the recent years. • Our understanding of multiple pregnancies has increased considerably. A separate chapter on multiple pregnancy has been added given that multiple pregnancies are at high risk of developing problems and therefore require greater attention. • An entire section of intrapartum problems has been added, making this a comprehensive Obstetric text. • The editors have managed to persuade leaders in the field to write for this edition. The chapters are authored by researchers working on the coalface. Their first-hand experience, knowledge, wisdom and hard work are evident in this edition.

Bonded Labor

Bonded Labor
Author: Siddharth Kara
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231158483

Focusing on the pervasive, deeply entrenched, and wholly unjust system of bonded labor, Kara delves into this ancient and ever-evolving mode of slavery, which ensnares roughly six out of every ten slaves in the world. He provides a thorough economic, historical, and legal overview of bonded labor, describes the violent enslavement of millions, and follows supply chains directly to Western consumers.

Colonial Modernities

Colonial Modernities
Author: Ambalika Guha
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351668404

The subject of medicalisation of childbirth in colonial India has so far been identified with three major themes: the attempt to reform or ‘sanitise’ the site of birthing practices, establishing lying-in hospitals and replacing traditional birth attendants with trained midwives and qualified female doctors. This book, part of the series The Social History of Health and Medicine in South Asia, looks at the interactions between childbirth and midwifery practices and colonial modernities. Taking eastern India as a case study and related research from other areas, with hard empirical data from local government bodies, municipal corporations and district boards, it goes beyond the conventional narrative to show how the late nineteenth-century initiatives to reform birthing practices were essentially a modernist response of the western-educated colonised middle class to the colonial critique of Indian sociocultural codes. It provides a perceptive historical analysis of how institutionalisation of midwifery was shaped by the debates on the women’s question, nationalism and colonial public health policies, all intersecting in the interwar years. The study traces the beginning of medicalisation of childbirth, the professionalisation of obstetrics, the agency of male doctors, inclusion of midwifery as an academic subject in medical colleges and consequences of maternal care and infant welfare. This book will greatly interest scholars and researchers in history, social medicine, public policy, gender studies and South Asian studies.

Where There is No Midwife

Where There is No Midwife
Author: Sarah Pinto
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2008
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9781845453107

"In the Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh, an agricultural region with high rates of infant mortality, maternal health services are poor while family planning efforts are intensive. By following the daily lives of women in this setting, the author considers the women's own experiences of birth and infant death, their ways of making-do, and the hierarchies they create and contend with. This book develops an approach to the care that focuses on emotion, domestic spaces, illicit and extra-institutional biomedicine, and household and neighborly relations that these women are able to access. It shows that, as part of the concatenation of affect and access, globalized moralities about reproduction are dependent on ambiguous ideas about caste. Through the unfolding of birth and death, a new vision of "untouchability" emerges that is integral to visions of progress."--Jacket.