Tag: Childbirth
Nadia Mbonde , May 11th, 2021
When I ask Willow, an Afro-Puerto Rican young woman in her 20s, if quarantine has helped reduce the stigma of mental illness, she responds: I think it will…
Gabriela Elisa Morales , December 1st, 2020
In the small municipal hospital in the Bolivian highland town of Machacamarca (a pseudonym), the chilly air of the Andes seeps into the building, traveling through the thin…
Emily Yates-Doerr , January 27th, 2020
For Spanish click here. In the early months of 2016, as global media sources incited fear among pregnant women that Zika would result in babies with small heads…
Rosario García-Meza , January 27th, 2020
For English click here La vida social de las métricas Guatemala es uno de los países de Centroamérica que ha reportado en la última década uno de los…
Alma Gottlieb , March 11th, 2019
Cultural anthropologist, Robbie Davis-Floyd, is considered by many as the Queen of Childbirth Studies. A Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of…
Andrea Ford , June 8th, 2018
Drawings from my research on childbirth in California created an opportunity for sharing reflections on fieldwork and “seeing.” Birth is a highly mediated experience, with ubiquitous images of…
Steve Sturdy , May 7th, 2018
Routine collection of blood samples from neonates – often using so-called Guthrie cards (pictured) – began in the 1960s when a number of North American and European countries…
Nanna Schneidermann , January 17th, 2018
What does making a new life look like from the perspective of a mobile phone? For the phone of a woman using the public health care system in…
Tamuka Chekero , October 25th, 2017
Chekero met Pauline at a local pharmacy in Giyani, a small town in the north-east of the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The area is best known to…
Alma Gottlieb , August 30th, 2017
After having recently received a venomous bite by a brown recluse spider in NYC, I’ve spent some time researching my arachnid attacker and discovering how to recover from the…
Terena Koster , July 24th, 2017
During the midwife-hosted antenatal class Cath attended in a private hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, where she would eventually give birth, pregnant women were encouraged to name…
Alma Gottlieb , January 20th, 2017
Many thanks to the 1,152 people who entered our publisher’s Amazon Giveaway to receive free copies of A World of Babies, and to Cambridge University Press for sponsoring…
Alma Gottlieb , January 8th, 2017
Win a free copy of “A World of Babies”! To celebrate the official publication of the book, which is January 2017, our publisher is sponsoring an Amazon Giveaway….
Min'enhle Ncube , September 19th, 2016
Nomsa, her sixteen month old son Nathi and I met early one morning at the entrance to the open cast mine in Mafuyana, Southern Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. Nathi safely…
Nicole Ferreira , August 29th, 2016
I met Libby on a cold winter morning at the clinic. She was a short woman with a strong voice and slow walk. Libby was 35 years old…
Kathleen McDougall , June 28th, 2016
“I was willing to die,” Terri told me, “I just didn’t want to have another caesarian.” She referred to her vaginal birth after three c-sections (a VBA3C), which…
The Anxious Anthropologist , May 16th, 2016
Nine years ago when I started my doctoral studies not only was I in a fertile intellectual endeavour undertaking fieldwork, reading theory, stretching my brain and writing,…
→The Anxious Anthropologist: culture, health and everyday life
Jennifer Rogerson , April 25th, 2016
Choice and the assigning of value in the practices and crafting of life-giving work In healthy birthing initiatives described by, among others, the World Health Organization, emphasis has…
Michelle Pentecost , April 11th, 2016
(On behalf of the First Thousand Days Research Group (University of Cape Town)) “Good nutrition in the first 1000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second…
Hannah Gibson , January 7th, 2016
For this installment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Elly Teman, a medical anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of reproduction and a senior lecturer…
Alma Gottlieb , February 2nd, 2015
New research claims that saying “Ow” really can ease the pain. Why am I skeptical? Or, rather, why am I skeptical that this works globally? For one thing,…