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Men in the United States do not learn about birth from their fathers around the campfire, nor do they watch other dads in the delivery room. They do not generally talk about it over beer or basketball. In fact, men are not much of a source of information for birthing fathers. When experienced dads do talk to young fathers about birth, their advice is usually supportive, but perfunctory; as one put it, “The one friend I talked with said my part is to stay on my feet where she can see me.” Mothers and fathers prepare differently for birth. Pregnant women talk to their friends, their mothers, and their coworkers. They read, often becoming veritable libraries of reproductive literature. Women load shelves with books about conceiving, expecting, birthing, naming, and bringing up babies. The men I talked with tend to avoid written sources. As another father confessed, “I don’t read the manual and directions for my new computer, do you think I’m going to sit down and read a book about pregnancy?” Birthing classes, not books or mentors, teach a man about pregnancy and childbirth, usually while he is sitting on the floor with his partner, surrounded by a dozen or so other pregnant couples. Once a week for six to twelve weeks, soon-to-be fathers set aside work and play to retreat into a dimly lit room where they learn the magic and the mysteries of birth. They feel a mixture of anxiety, excitement, boredom, and fear as they are taught about the drama of birth and 135 5 Birthing Classes Training Men to Birth I don’t remember a whole lot from those classes. There was just one thing I remembered that they had, this little model of a pelvis and they told us how the baby needed to come through that and I was like, “Oh, okay, I never thought that the baby had to go through the pelvis.” —Joe their part in the program. Men experience the uneasy camaraderie of boot camp, the vulnerability of a consciousness-raising group, and the magic of a séance. Finally, with ceremonial flourish, they complete the last class and are deemed ready to carry out their first great act as a father—the birthing of their babies. The prepared childbirth movement was based in education. Birthing women need to know about birth, both to dispel the myths that cause pain and to learn the tools to contend with the travails of childbirth. Just as important as preparing mothers, it is deemed essential to inform fathers. Fathers need education to be confident and efficient members of the team. With this in mind, the architects of the childbirth revolution wrote books and developed courses for parents—the sacred books and liturgies of the new birthing culture. But classes do more than train men for fear-free or pain-free birth; classes develop men’s identity as fathers. For women, conception starts a long series of intense experiences that transform them into mothers. Biological changes give pregnant mothers both explicit and unconscious experiences of the new being; other mothers share experiences about the change, and every stranger on the street looks at a pregnant woman with a new eye. This shared and often silent recognition provides a new mother with a mirror to see herself in her developing role. Not so with men, however. Trained as domestic warriors, not caregivers , fathers have fewer venues to try on their new role. They have none of the physical and far less of the social experience of pregnancy. They do not feel the kick of the baby or the understanding of strangers on the street. But they do have birthing classes. Removed from the workaday world, far from their office buddies and baseball diamonds, birthing classes become an important arena in which to learn about themselves as fathers. Understanding birth classes as ritual highlights how this training functions as a new American couvade. Men are isolated from conventional life in a liminal time and space, stripped of their conventional identities. They submit to formalized and repetitive activities that communicate important aspects of their new role and relationships in the world. As in other forms of couvade, childbirth classes transform the father’s identity, and his relations with the baby, mother, and society. Birthing classes create the time for men to relate directly to the developing baby. In the frantic final days of pregnancy, they have a moment (or evening) of calm to...

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