Ideal Births and Ideal Babies: English-Canadian Advice Literature in the 1950s and 1960s | Zendy

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Ideal Births and Ideal Babies: English-Canadian Advice Literature in the 1950s and 1960s

Author(s) -

Sally Mennill

Publication year - 2014

Publication title -

canadian journal of health history

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117

H-Index - 13

eISSN - 2371-0179

pISSN - 0823-2105

DOI - 10.3138/cbmh.31.2.25

Subject(s) - ideal (ethics) , enthusiasm , realm , ideology , childbirth , silence , quickening , government (linguistics) , obstacle , gender studies , medicine , sociology , nursing , political science , psychology , aesthetics , law , politics , pregnancy , social psychology , art , philosophy , linguistics , radiology , biology , genetics

This paper explores how the ideal birth was constructed after World War Two, noting in particular the abstract enthusiasm on the part of physicians and government advocates for technological innovation accompanied by simultaneous silence regarding the specificities of labour and delivery in advice literature. The relationship of prescriptive mothering to the nascent medical ideology of prevention-oriented surveillance had a direct impact on the disembodying of women in the birthing process. Both vaginal and surgical childbirth were kept firmly within the realm of medical expertise, painting parturition as something that happened to women, rather than something they did themselves.

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