Chapter 1: Pregnancy & Birth in Intercultural Settings
Overview
Becoming a mother brings about profound changes to a woman's social status and self-perception. In many societies, the birth of the first child is the singular biosocial event which marks a woman as adult; until that time, regardless of her chronological age, she remains socially a child. In some cases, birth itself is not enough, and a woman's adult status may be dependent instead on the survival through early infancy of the first child, or in some patrilineal societies, on the birth of the first son. In accordance with the personal, cultural and social significance of childbirth and motherhood, most if not all societies ritually mark pregnancy, birth and the puerperium. In small-scale societies the traditional birth attendant often plays an important role in this. In addition, the importance of children is celebrated through rituals such as naming ceremonies, and through various protective behaviours such as the use of special names and restrictions on diet and activity.
For immigrant women in a new country of settlement, pregnancy and birth are dense with additional meanings: the birth of a child whose nationality is that of the host country, the child symbolically staking the parent's claim to a new home; the absence (usually) of kin for whom the birth is so significant; often the specific absence of the mother or mother-in-law whose role during this period might be regarded as crucial; and the absence of a traditional birth attendant knowledgeable of various culturally and ritually important procedures. Pregnancy and birth following migration may also be a woman's first significant contact with the health and medical services of the host country, and since women are typically responsible for their family's health care (Chavira-Prado, 1992; Koblinsky, Timyan and Gay, 1993), this interchange is of major importance.
Some 10 per cent of Australians are born overseas of non-English-speaking backgrounds; a further 10 per cent have parents who were born overseas and for whom English is not their first language. Since the 1950s, the source countries of Australia's immigrants has been increasingly diverse, with new arrivals drawn first from eastern and southern Europe then from other countries in the Mediterranean and Asia. The migration of Asians increased as a consequence of numbers of people seeking refuge during and after the Vietnam War, and as a result of changes to immigration policy that had previously severely restricted Asian immigration (Price, 1979; Martin, 1978; Jupp, 1990).
Due to selection criteria, migration to Australia has involved primarily young nuclear family units intending to settle permanently in Australia, resulting in young immigrant women often having their first child in Australia in relatively isolated circumstances, although under provisions for "family reunion" parents and other kin have been able to join settled families. These new mothers have often had to resolve alone the practical and ideological conflicts of childrearing and employment soon after their arrival in Australia, when their knowledge of English was poor and their familiarity with Australian health and welfare services was minimal (e.g. Inglis and Manderson, 1984; Manderson and Inglis, 1985). In addition, they have given birth in a society that has, on the whole, been ignorant of the different ways in which women "do" birth and confinement (Rice, 1993; Rice, Chapter 8, this volume). The chapters of this volume, describing practices associated with pregnancy, birth and infant care among women from East and Southeast Asia, help to redress this ignorance and to provide health care providers with ways of understanding and supporting the different approaches that women have to reproduction.
In this introduction, I first discuss rituals of birth and confinement, drawing attention to both the commonalities and the differences among Asian women. I then consider some of the issues that arise for immigrant women in giving birth and caring for a new infant, with particular emphasis on the Australian setting, as described in detail by the authors contributing to this volume. These have implications in terms of health policy and practical responses in the provision of health care.
Speaker/ Author:
LENORE MANDERSON
Lenore is a medical anthropologist. Since 1988 she has been Professor of Tropical Health with the Tropical Health Program at The University of Queensland. Her research spans the disciplinary fields of anthropology, sociology, social history and public health. Her early research was conducted in Peninsular Malaysia and the United Kingdom, and with Vietnamese, Turkish and Anglo- Australian communities in Australia. She has just completed a major work on health and illness under colonialism. Her present work includes the study of social and cultural aspects of malaria (in Ghana and the Philippines), and issues relating to gender, sexuality and health. She was born in Australia, is married, and has two children
|
Resources 
