Tired of Weeping: Mother Love, Child Death, and Poverty in Guinea-Bissau

2. Burdens of Birth

The phrase “burdens of birth,” (kansera di padi), is commonly heard in Biombo. With time, I come to realize that burdens of birth are not restricted to delivery but included other events related to childbearing as well. Delivery, which is considered to be a frightful and dangerousevent ,isdescribedasaparticularly painful and tortuous experience . “Women suffer because they give birth,”I am repeatedly told. But also: “Mothers love their children because they have to endure the pains of birth.” Pain has different meanings in different cultures and eras (Johannisson 1996; Kleinman et al. 1992; Kleinman, Das, and Lock 1997; Morris 1991). Before the introduction of anesthesia in Western societies pain was thought of as a natural and unavoidable part of childbirth (Poovey 1987). According to Catholic doctrine, pain during childbirth was women’s punishment for original sin. Yet, control of pain in childbirth with the application of technology and extensive use of medicines spread rapidly with the introduction of hospital births (Cosslett 60 2 Burdens of Birth 1994, Davis-Floyd and Sargent 1997a). In the United States in the 1940s, wealthy women who had allied themselves with physicians held that “the progressive, ‘modern’ way of giving birth was to divorce oneself from outdated servitude to biology by giving birth in the hospital under total anesthesia ” (Davis-Floyd and Sargent 1997b:9). However, since the late 1960s many feminist researchers have criticized the excessive use of painkilling drugs and advanced technology in birth. The critics have also denounced the male domination of childbirth, which has curtailed the agency of women in childbirth, both as mothers and midwives. As a reaction to the extensive use of technology and drugs a return to more “natural” childbirth practices was advocated (Fisk 1997, Holmqvist 2000, Jordan 1983, Morris 1991). After it was considered a woman’s right to give birth with pain relief, it has become virtuous for a Western mother to endure the pains of birth. According to Tess Cosslett (1994) natural childbirth , sometimes idealized as painless,1 is predicated on the assumption that women are essentially mothers, that childbirth is innate or instinctive, and that birth should occur without medication and technical intervention. Midwifery has been given notable attention in the anthropological literature on childbirth, and knowledge needed for birth assistance is explained as either acquired, instinctive, or evolutionarily adapted (Davis-Floyd and Sargent 1997b, Jordan 1983, MacCormack 1982, Trevathan 1997). Research on midwifery emphasizes the role of traditional birth attendants in giving emotional support to women during labor.2 The physical anthropologist Wenda R. Trevathan (1997) suggests that emotions related to childbirth, such as fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, have led women to seek company from other women during childbirth as an adaptive survival strategy; thus, she argues, only in a few cultures do women give birth alone. According to the anthropologists Robbie E. Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent, Trevathan ’s research “shows the benefits to mother and child of continuous woman-to-woman contact, of safeguarding—rather than regulating—the process of birth as it unfolds, of providing a supportive environment, and of allowing uninterrupted time after birth for the formation of a strong mother-infant bond”(1997b:9). The popular maternal bonding theory, which takes mother-infant contact directly after birth as essential for maternal affection, holds that mother love originates in childbirth. This theory was established in the early 1970s by two American pediatricians, John Klaus and Marshall Kennell.3 Klaus and Kennell were influenced by John Bowlby’s attachment theory, which was grounded on Freudian thinking about the primacy of our early emotional relationships with parents, particularly the mother, for the formation Burdens of Birth 61 of individual personality (Eyer 1992, Hrdy 1999).4 Bowlby concludes that maternalemotionalandnutritiveresponsesareprovokedbyinfantbehavior, which is instinctual and adaptive for their survival, analogous to imprinting in birds. Maternal bonding theory uses female sheep and goats as a point of reference, but sheep and goats reject their offspring if separated from them immediately postpartum.5 Klaus and Kennell argue that, because of the hormonal status of mothers after giving birth, the first minutes and hours of life are a “sensitive period” through which maternal affection is established . In contrast, Bowlby is concerned with how infants gradually became attached to their mothers. Thus, Bowlby argues that mothers should not be separated from their children during the first three years to achieve a secure attachment. Both attachment theory and bonding theory attribute disturbances in child...