Mother with Child: Transformations Through Childbirth - Softcover

Rabuzzi, Kathryn Allen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253208270 ISBN 13: 9780253208279

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1994

Synopsis

"A lovely book. It represents a way of looking at the meaning of birth that has particular richness for women and a relevance for this period of history in which more and more women interpret their births and their bodies in highly mechanistic terms...completely unaware of the potential for sacrality they are ignoring and therefore losing. It is a book for anyone wishing to reexamine and reclaim birthOs potential for sacredness." - Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of "Birth as an American Rite of Passage". The act of giving birth can be an important, natural means of self-transformation and revelation. But women have been robbed of this essentially empowering and transformative act. As women experience, childbearing has been variously denigrated, denied, and devalued. Yet, it has also been appropriated as the paradigm for religious rituals and initiations into male-dominated social realms. Patriarchy makes use of the metaphor of birth even as it distances itself from actual childbirth. To counter these disturbing thefts, Rabuzzi proposes that women rename, reritualize, reinterpret, and reframe childbearing for themselves and their partners. Drawing on materials from many sources, including myths, midwifery accounts, women's birthing stories, and New Age practices, her book is intended to show women how to do just that.

About this title

About the Author

KATHRYN ALLEN RABUZZI teaches English at Syracuse University, is the author of Motherself: A Mythic Analysis of Motherhood and The Sacred and the Feminine: Towards a Theology of Housework, and is a founding editor of the journal Literature and Medicine.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253208270
• ISBN 13: 9780253208279
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240