Abstract
Birth is often imagined as an individual event, bounded by the mother’s body and medical protocols. Yet from a humanistic perspective, birth is profoundly relational: it is lived with others. The experience of birthing consciousness (an altered state shaped by hormones, environment, and human presence) reveals that birth is not only a threshold of life but also a threshold of community. In this study, I draw on women’s narratives from my qualitative studies, alongside findings from quantitative surveys and longitudinal research I have conducted with colleagues, to explore how communities of care are formed, sustained, and sometimes fractured in the birthing room. These diverse methodologies demonstrate that women’s sense of safety, recognition, and belonging during labor depends on the presence of others, whether professional or personal, and that the quality of these relationships leaves enduring marks on women’s lives. Placing childbirth at the center of the humanities highlights its dual nature as both intimate and social, biological and cultural. At the same time, this talk critically interrogates the medicalized framing of birth, revealing how cultural and institutional power relations inscribe themselves onto the most intimate of human events. To attend to birth is to attend to the porous boundaries between body and world, autonomy and dependence, individuality and collectivity. Birthing with others thus becomes a lens through which to rethink community as a lived practice of trust, vulnerability, and interdependence. In times of social fragmentation, this perspective shows how birth can illuminate broader questions of belonging and solidarity beyond borders.
Presenters
Orli DahanSenior Lecturer, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Tel-Hai College, HaZafon, Israel
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Childbirth, Birthing Consciousness, Community, Relationality, Critical Cultural Studies, Medicalization, Humanities
