PublishedChatto & Windus, March 2007 |
ISBN9780701181192 |
FormatSoftcover, 320 pages |
Dimensions23.4cm × 15.3cm × 2.3cm |
NOT FINAL DESCRIPTION pringing from a lively, personal introduction in which Tina Cassidy describes her grandmother's, her mother's, and her own experiences of giving birth, readers are taken on an astounding journey into the history of childbirth. From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we are born the way we are. omen have been giving birth for millennia but that's about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction.
Why is it that every culture-and every generation-seems to have its own ideas about the best way to get a baby born? Birth explores the physical, anthropological, political, and religious factors that have influenced and will continue to influence how women bring new life into the world. Among the topics that Tina Cassidy looks at are- why birth can be so difficult (blame our ability to walk on two legs, for instance), where women deliver (a hut, a home, or a hospital), how they have handled pain, the role of men at the moment of birth, how the perception of midwives has changed (they were once burned as witches),
