Volume – 10 – The Era of De-institu-what?
Just over a century ago (if not less), the meer thought of giving birth within a hospital, with doctors, nurses, equipment and drugs all within ones reach was much more a dream then a reality. However, with the evolution of technology has come the evolution of the birth process. We have taken a natural beginning of life and handed it over to the institution, taken it out of the home and into a large, dreary and often smelly hospital.
This idea of the institutionalization of the birth process is in some ways good. It helps if there are any medical emergencies or problems that would not be able to be properly handled within the home. However, some people are not fond of the idea of taking such a beautiful part of life and giving it over to someone else to have control over, to make it routine and just another day on the job. In The New Midwifery: Science and Sensitivity in Practice, the authors Lesley Ann Page and Rona McCandlish discuss the modern issues with this idea.
Part of the risk of being in an institutionalized environment is the effect it has on the individual in terms of compliance and the difficulty to resisting others expectations and rules… of being exposed to the greater coerciveness of an ideology in its own setting and to our socialized and gender learnt responses to institutional power.
In other words, the institution is taking away womens power and comfortableness with their own birth process. This is why a small percentage of the population is leaning towards the deinstitutionalized methods of birth, whether it be natural, unassisted or with a midwife. They are trying to keep the birthing process as sacred and natural moment in their life rather then the institutionalized process that it has turned into.
