Until the later 1960s fathers-to-be were excluded from birth in cultures that had a modern maternity system. Women went to hospital and fathers went the the waiting room, home. the bar or pub.
Has birth always been ‘women’s business’? Some authors imply it has yet around the world and in many cultures fathers have not only been present at birth but also delivered their babies. As discussed in other posts there are cultures where women went off and birthed alone while in other cultures women went to birth huts with other women who attended them. In other cultures women birthed where they lived with everyone around. The concept of a professional midwife is recent. Women helped other women birth and fathers helped their partner birth. With all this variation one thing remains consistent … women giving birth. That’s the commonality that exists above and beyond the variation of individuality. No woman births out her mouth. No contraction starts at the big toe sweeps up the body with the baby exiting from the top of the head. No baby is carried inside the armpit. Our commonality is much more profound than our individuality, our cultural or religious differences.
In most modern countries fathers are now expected to ‘be there’ during the birth. But what is their role? As previously mentioned in the 1960s/70s the role of the father-to-be was ‘birth coach’ in the US but not in all modern countries. There was a strong societal expectation that expectant families learn birth and coaching skills. Mothers were taught a series of techniques and so were fathers. Fathers mostly timed contractions, lifted arms to make certain there was no tension in the woman’s body and did breathing techniques with the woman.
Then by the 1980s the role of fathers-to-be changed as the Choice-based childbirth trend ascended. They were told to ‘support’ the woman, warned not to tell the woman what to do and to just be there to fill her needs and wants. We were told that coaching meant standing on the side lines shouting at the players and we didn’t want that in birth because women innately knew how to birth and no one, least of all the father, should tell a woman what to do.
This is what most fathers-to-be do now … they stand around not certain what to do. Some try their best with small but significant gestures: get hung on, offer ice chips, have their hands squeezed, wipe a brow or try to massage the lower back. Does that sound right to you? Does it feel right? In order to know whether this role, these task, doing this job as a ‘support’ person is sufficient, pleasing, satisfying, fulfilling and practical to any family we must compare it to the larger role of being a father.
Let’s ask it this way? As a woman do you want to change the diapers all the time with your husband/partner looking over your shoulder, handing you this or that, praising you and being ‘supportive’ of your role as a mother or do you want him to have the skills to change diapers himself? The role of women and men has changed tremendously in our modern societies. Men no longer are the bread winners exclusively with the women staying at home and taking care of the children. Times have changed. Men are now expected to do house work and take care of their children just as women are expected to have a job and earn money for the family. Certainly there are some families who still have the more ‘traditional’ modern roles but fewer and fewer.
And there are some cultures and religions where the father-to-be is not permitted to touch his wife during labor. As you read this post you must consider your own situation (your own individuality) and balance it with our commonality. Fathers in this situation can still help the woman prepare for the birth of their baby in the privacy of their own home and if that woman and man were all alone when the birth occurred, any father would help regardless of culture or faith. There are always situations where the rules are bent.
How has the Choice-based childbirth trend impacted fathers? We’ve already seen that skills were removed from their job and replaced with supportive gestures. There were three rationales for doing so: 1) Women instinctively know how to birth 2) Women should be left alone to discover birth themselves. 3) By gathering information, knowing the pros/cons of birth options women can make choices about the birth they want.
These three components have always been the basis for the Choice-based approach but they are problematic.
1) Just because women give birth it does not mean they know how. Something that’s physiologically driven does not mean we know how best to work with that. Children don’t instinctively know what foods are safe or not even though hunger is physiologically driven. We teach them what is safe to put in their mouths.
2) Many women do not like to be left one during the birth. If necessary they will cope but the vast majority of women want someone there who can help them. Without fathers having skills then women naturally seek help from their professionals. Even when fathers have skills and can truly help, most modern families want a birth provider who is trained in recognizing and dealing with unusual circumstances. This shows us that skills are a type of help not confused with a high level of medical training. Without skills the help is still wanted but those with medical training don’t see ‘coaching’ as their role/job.
3) As mentioned in the previous post, there are so many variables around ‘choice’ … what women want, how things change, what unfolds and how they feel about everything. This makes it almost impossible …. no matter how much research a woman does, no matter how thoughtful her considerations and no matter how determined she is … for any woman to ‘choose’ the birth she will eventually have.
All of this leaves fathers-to-be exhausted. It’s so easy for them to retreat into: ‘It’s your body, do what you want’ or ‘You’re giving birth its up to you’. In other words without a good set of practical skills, fathers easily retreat into ‘birth is woman’s business’. But most women want the father of their baby to be actively involved.
In reality had the Choice-based advocates acknowledged the benefits of birth/coaching skills and skills had evolved alongside the Choice-based trend we probably would not be in the pickle we are now with childbirth. But that didn’t happen because reality got confused with wishful thinking and a misunderstanding of primal/physiological processes. Now is the Time to wake up and shift the trend.
There are many more children being brought up in single parent families. There are more fathers who are staying at home or being that single parent. Men need to know how-to move from ‘becoming’ a father to ‘being’ one. The very best way to do that is to have a set of skills that any man, all men, can learn because we are all One Humanity and we share a commonality that trumps our individuality.
Our New Zealand charitable Trust has evolved these skills from very diverse families over the past 45 years. We have an expectant fathers blog that helps men evolve skills throughout the 5 phases of pregnancy. Women are pulled along in their growth because the baby has a biological mandate to grow. Women want their partner to grow with them but fathers don’t have a clue how.
And our Trust has put out a multi-media resource called The Pink Kit with the skills to prepare the pregnant body to become a birthing body and the skills to be an effective birth coach. This resource has its imperfections. The DVD was filmed many years ago and the families are wearing clothes from the 1980s. Ignore the presentation and reap the benefits of the skills. There is NO order to learn skills in the ebooks or audio CDs so there is no ‘follow along 1,2,3’. Pick and choose (see ‘choice’ is important) what you want to learn when. YOU know what skills you lack. This lack of organization is intentional. Anyone with a child knows that you have to adjust and adapt as you go, there is hardly a 1,2,3 approach to anything about parenting no matter how organized.
Now is the Time to bring fathers-to-be back into the business of being a father. Choices certainly have major values yet skills will always win on the day. It is what we ‘do’ that gets us through the tasks in front of us. We cannot risk failing the men of our species. We need women and men to work together to create balanced families whether the ‘family’ stays together. Our children represent both of us and they deserve skilled fathers as well as skilled mothers.