Going Into Labour
Childbirth In Capitalism
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Childbirth is often described as a natural process, and yet the choices we make around birth, the risks we face and the care available to us, are tightly bound up in the dynamics of the capitalist system in which we live. Capitalist relations shape childbirth in unacknowledged ways but with intensely inequitable, often traumatic, effects.
Going into Labour is a Marxist analysis of the labour of childbirth and birth care. Former midwife Anna Fielder interrogates key features of contemporary childbearing, situating birth as a crucial site of struggle against capitalism.
Fielder emphasises the pay and working conditions of birth workers such as midwives and nurses. She also signals the importance of political struggles in birthing arenas against forces including racism, colonialism, misogyny and cisheteronormativity. As capitalism draws on these forces, shaping contemporary inequities and oppressions, activists work to gestate futures that aspire beyond the constraints of the present.
About this Author
Anna Fielder is currently a tutor at Massey University, and works as a researcher in the Centre for Midwifery and Women's Health Research at AUT (Auckland University of Technology). She has written and co-authored various publications which relate to pregnancy, birth, childhood or Marxism. She was employed as a midwife in the UK from 2003 to 2008.
Reviews
'This insightful, thoughtful work needs to be read by all of us who are interested in contemporary childbirth practices. Anna Fielder has brought together the two concepts of labour - work, and giving birth - and shows us how both are subsumed under capitalism'
'I have never seen a book that applies Marxist theories and capitalism to childbirth. This book is entirely original and a fascinating read!'
'Fielder does indeed peel back the layers to reveal how capitalism shapes childbirth. It is refreshing, unique and provides a missing piece in birth scholarship and challenges us to be part of the 'collective push to justice and equity''
'A pivotal addition to Marxist understandings of pregnancy and childbirth. Fielder's nuanced analysis denaturalises human biological reproduction and demonstrates the contradictory features of obstetrics in capitalist society.'
'Anna Fielder has written the book which midwives and birth activists have long needed as we have struggled with the cumulative damage wrought to birthing environments internationally under the lethal regime of neoliberal capitalism. The resulting acute global shortage of midwives, increasing trauma for women, rising rates of illness and death for the poorest and most marginalised, and the endless nightmare of giving birth in conditions of war and genocide should have every single one of us out on the streets in protest. This book gives us the analytical tools we require to do so effectively'
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