Native American Childbirth Essay

In Plane’s essay, “Childbirth Practices Among Native American Women of New England and Canada, 1600-1800,” the author describes the Euro-American’s views of Native American childbirth and illustrates that people’s experience with reproduction is shaped by their own cultural values and previous knowledge. For Euro-American women, this probably involved similar emotions and events as to what we see today- pain, nervousness, excitement, and celebration. But for Native American women, this experience was anything but a spectacle. For Euro-Americans, childbirth was a social event. They called “four or five female friends over to help with the birth.” Because of this “social childbirth”, Euro-Americans found it bizarre that native women tended
They “went off alone into the forest and returned in a short while with a new baby, resuming [their] activities as if nothing had happened.” Based on the Euro-American’s amazement of this, we can assume that this experience was anything but effortless for them. Euro-Americans most likely spent months preparing for the birth of their child. Following the birth of their newborn child, most Native women returned to their daily lives, which included laborious work, almost immediately. In contrast, Euro-American women most likely remained on bed rest for a few days, before returning to their lives sans excessive physical exertion. The experience of labor for a Euro-American woman was vastly different from a that of a Native American woman. Because of cultural values, “Indian women did not make noise during labor” which lead some Euro-Americans to believe “that Indian women did not even feel pain during birth.” Most anyone who has gone through natural childbirth would say that it was difficult and excruciating. It probably involved many tears, many groans, and lots of pain. Native American women “faced cultural constraints on their expressions on pain” and while they felt it, “they did not let it overwhelm