A Passion for Birth

by Sheila Kitzinger

  I write for pregnant women and their partners, women who have given birth in the past – with varied experiences, positive and negative – and everyone concerned about choice and control in childbirth, education for birth, home birth, and women’s and children’s rights.

  Half a century ago men were often not with their partners in childbirth, and women had no right, or the knowledge, to make informed choices. They were subjected to routine episiotomy, a compulsory perineal shave, and often an enema, too. They were expected to lie down, be obedient, and accept the decisions of professional caregivers without question. They were merely bodies to be delivered. In Britain, and increasingly in other countries, that is now history.

  I am highly critical of the ways in which antenatal classes have been taught. It changed from a training that imposed a rigid internal discipline on the mother, with strictly regulated breathing and the sounds she was allowed to make. That was how hide-bound Russian, French, and later, British and American psychoprophylaxis, was. Now we have moved from rules to spontaneity, from instruction to freedom of choice and action, from copy-cat learning to getting to understand evidence-based research, and from mere ‘shopping around’ to awareness of the impact of the social context in which birth takes place.

  It is easy to romanticise birth in other societies, to see it from the standpoint of our own medicalised, high-tech culture and think, ‘That must be lovely – to have your mother’s arms around you, sit on another woman’s lap.’ But I am convinced that the challenge is to create our own woman-centred culture of childbirth. We can incorporate some practices from other traditions, yes, but the birth culture should be our own, not an imitation of something elsewhere in the world.

  I open a newspaper and see myself described, yet again, as a childbirth ‘guru’. I growl. That’s the last thing I want to be. I don’t have any mantras, creed, high priestess pronouncements or mystic incantations. My knowledge comes from personal experience, and being with women as they give birth in many countries around the world, open to their hopes and fears, and sharing the excitement and triumph of birth.

  I asked Jenni Murray of BBC Woman’s Hour not to introduce me as a ‘guru’. She protested, ‘But you are!’ and tells how when she went into labour she said to her husband, ‘It’s started’, and he announced, ‘I’ll go and make my sandwiches then, because Sheila Kitzinger says I may get hungry.’ That, to me, is an example of practical tips – nothing to do with inspiration or mystical insight.

  This book is not only about birth, but other activities to which I am committed. We ran an aid agency from our home at the time of the Yugoslav crisis when Muslim refugees were pouring into Croatia from the massacres in Bosnia. It absorbed pretty well my whole life for two years. I tell how Tess, Uwe and I organised Lentils for Dubrovnik and describe the experience of almost being squeezed out of the house by shoe boxes piled in towers.

  I describe exciting anthropological field research in the Caribbean, Australia, Fiji, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, Italy, Spain, Mexico and other countries. I write about all the things that have energised me and stimulated my work: birth images and goddesses in many cultures – midwifery, birth research and activism.

  The struggle for woman-centred childbirth is an uphill battle. The more we gain, the more we must reach out. There have been times when I felt I was hitting my head against a brick wall and wondered if I could go on. But then a woman rings me up out of the blue and says, ‘Thank you for what you did to help me have a lovely birth experience.’ And that makes it all worthwhile.

  CHAPTER ONE

  AN UNCONVENTIONAL CHILDHOOD

  I was born at home in Taunton, Somerset, in 1929 and weighed nine and a half pounds. Clare, my mother, gained strength during a long labour by watching a woodpecker on the tree outside her bedroom window. If that bird could continue tapping away at the hard tree trunk, she knew she could carry on, too.

  She coped with a difficult labour in her pink and white bedroom – the shades of a rose garden – while my father rubbed her back, and the doctor with whom she worked, a close friend, Reggie Husbands, stood by in case he was needed. Contraction followed contraction relentlessly. I had my hand up on my head, and this slowed rotation and descent.

  Clare was narrow-hipped and little. As a baby she had suffered from rickets and wore lace-up remedial boots for several years. She remembered how the baby of the family was always fed from the ‘dutty pot’ that was kept permanently on the kitchen range. Tea, sugar and cereal of different kinds were mixed in it. Bad nutrition, but it stopped the crying!

  In the 1920s it was taken for granted that babies were born at home. Only the very poor or destitute who had no home to go to would enter an institution. Caregivers, usually family practitioners with the nurse attached to their practice, came to the mother. They were guests in the home and the woman kept control of her own household. It was her territory.

  Women could use furniture they knew well to get into different positions for comfort – a window ledge, a table, settee, a dining chair or a rocking chair. Mother looped a towel over the top corner of a door and around the handle in the second stage and pulled on it, changing her weight from one leg to the other, stooping forward, bending, or kneeling as she pulled. This was what she did for the women she attended, too. Best was a strong kitchen roller towel. You can get a good grip on that.

  Mother’s family were pillars of the community, bakers who lived to one side of the shop. There were seven children, five girls, two boys and my mother was the second youngest. They were staunch Unitarians and ran the debating society that met at their house. When Mother was 15 she started to work as a nurse, first with soldiers wounded in the First World War, and then with Dr Reggie and his younger brother Roland, helping women give birth and caring for them afterwards.

  At 17, Alec, my father, had run off to enlist in the army as a despatch rider, disguising his age. He spent a stint guarding the Acropolis, which he told me had been a waste of time because ‘it was a ruin anyway’. Then he drove into the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey, couldn’t get through because of a violent attack on a narrow pass, turned the motor cycle back the other way and sped as horses and men were slaughtered and fell into the crevasse. He was now into sports cars in a big way.

  When he came out of the army he went into the family tailoring business, trading top quality tweeds from Kirkcudbright and Galloway where his family were crofters. A whole swathe of the family had come down to Somerset because the Scottish soil was poor, and they used the network of family and neighbourhood to get the best tweeds and cater for farming families. They travelled around so that customers did not have to go into Taunton to shop. My grandfather James, Alec’s father, had established the business, and Alec now had two staff members and an apprentice, and was warmly welcomed by people all over the Blackdown Hills.

  My father was a man of strong integrity and the farmers and their families trusted and relied on him. As he went from home to home with his tweeds and patterns and listened to the daily problems they faced, over the tea that was always poured, he was a bit like an itinerant priest going round to hear confession, or perhaps a medieval kind of psychotherapist – always there for them. Sometimes he took me with him when I was small, and I remember the welcome and warmth in their eyes.

  Mother was a role model: midwife, early feminist, deeply convinced of the importance of free thought and expression who believed it was imperative to challenge racism, discrimination and violence, wherever it occurred. Striving for social equality, and against discrimination of all kinds, and for understanding between individuals, peoples and cultures was a strong theme in her – and her mother – beliefs and action, as it has been for me, for my husband Uwe, and is for our daughters.

  When Mother died I found a statement in the handkerchief drawer of her dressing table. I don’t think she had ever written anything before. She had certainly not been published.

  It started with a description of her experiences as a girl of
14 at the start of the First World War. She was on holiday at Watchet in Somerset and the cousins with whom she was staying asked her to go to the station to fetch the morning papers. There were crowds on the tiny platform. ‘Stacks of papers were thrown from the goods van and they could see the headlines: “War is Declared on Germany”. Another train steamed in bringing back the Territorials from their camp at Minehead, where they had been training to fight in the war. It was tremendously exciting.’

  She returned home, and soldiers were billeted on the family. ‘Many young girls got a kick out of life when they bravely presented a white feather to any young man they thought of military age who wasn’t in uniform.’ She commented, ‘In the majority of cases this was, I expect, innocently given, for after all, every man was expected to go to war to protect his women and children.’

  Clare longed to nurse wounded soldiers. At the age of 15 she decided to train to tend the sick, and started to nurse soldiers returning injured from the front. She described how, ‘One day, two Quaker ladies called on Mother and started to talk about things which opened up a new world to me’. They spoke about men being imprisoned for their beliefs that war was wrong. ‘I was sixteen when I was shocked into listening to what war really was. The “Gentle Jesus” days of a sheltered upbringing had ended.’ A new Minister came to the Unitarian chapel who preached that war was wrong and challenged every individual to do their utmost to prevent it ever breaking out again. In spite of nationalist fervour the chapel was full of fascinated men and women listening to his preaching. ‘On one occasion the Recruiting Officer appeared in our church, seating himself in the front row with several officers armed with pencils and notebooks, to hear if they could arrest our Minister on sedition. They could not. He preached on the Sermon on the Mount, and we sang “God Save the People”.’

  Clare made a commitment to struggle against violence. ‘Within my own family we were divided. My parents, especially my mother who lived her life befriending anyone who needed her, struggled hard to induce people to denounce war. My two eldest brothers had already gone to the war and by this time were overseas, both feeling that there was no other way.’

  Clare’s mother was friendly with a young school teacher, who afterwards became her son-in-law (my Uncle Stan) when he married Liz, my mother’s older sister. He was a gentle, scholarly conscientious objector arrested for refusing when called upon by the military authorities to have a medical examination, and sent to jail. ‘Peace had gone from our homes and families were strained severely.’

  Imprisoned conscientious objectors had to sew rough hessian mail bags. Stan pierced a finger with a needle and it became badly infected. Nothing was done about it. The poison spread. He was discharged from the prison with septicaemia. My mother cleaned and treated it – this was before the discovery of antibiotics, of course – and he recovered.

  One day in 1918, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the Armistice came. Clare wrote, ‘A few days before Christmas my mother, happy and busy, was looking forward to all the family being together for Christmas. She had had a letter from her eldest son who was now in France, telling her that he would be coming.’ She was cooking in the kitchen and Clare had gone to her bedroom over the kitchen and was about to try on a new dress. ‘Mother and I were alone in the house. I heard somebody come to the door, heard her answer it, and then a queer choking cry rather like the sound of an animal struggling. The low agonised cry stunned me. I can never forget it. I went downstairs to see her crouched in a chair, still wearing her cooking apron. I saw the telegram telling us that her eldest son had died in a few hours in a Canadian hospital in France. Immediately putting aside her grief, she took a taxi and hurried off to comfort his wife.

  ‘I was alone for the first time in my life with the shock of death. I had read about it often, and had known many friends who had died in the war, but this was our family. The whole horror of war seethed in on me.’ She resolved to work against war itself. ‘I saw my country no longer as patriotic songs had pictured it, but as Edith Cavell had voiced just before her death: “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”’

  Many years later my feminist daughters gathered by Edith Cavell’s memorial, off Trafalgar Square, to call for lesbian equality and to protest against injustice. They weren’t aware until recently of the strong family link with the idealism of Edith Cavell through female generations.

  More About My Mother

  So I had a rather unusual upbringing. Mother was both a feminist, though at that time she wouldn’t have called herself one, and a committed pacifist, and was always challenging powerful institutions. Father went along with what Mother believed. He loved her very dearly and admired her. It was difficult for him, because he came from a Wesleyan Methodist background. Mother’s Unitarian heritage was tolerant and completely undogmatic.

  As a child I absorbed this world view through practical actions and day-to-day living. It has formed the basis of my own relationships with my five daughters, and I can trace the link through three generations.

  Mother started off using a child rearing method that she had read about in books expounded by Truby King, an expert in calf-rearing, which claimed to impose discipline and order on babies by strictly timed feeds and a regime regulated by the clock. Truby King’s insistence on a hygienic all-white nursery with no shapes, colours or distractions to interfere with sleep and only being picked up once every four hours didn’t work with me. I screamed almost non-stop for three days until she finally gave up and moved me back into the bedroom.

  She later became committed to the teachings of Maria Montessori, who emphasised respect for the child, and the development of imagination and creativity, and this became the dominant influence as I grew. She had a Montessori governess for me before I went to school, and found an elementary school with a Montessori class in it. She was very interested in education that encouraged children to ask questions, not to follow a path that was laid out for them, but explore all their potential, discover themselves, and do what they wanted in life. She was convinced that I should have a career, not just marry, have children, and be content with being a mother and house wife.

  Her reading was very different from the books my friends’ mothers had on their shelves, The Well of Loneliness, for example, and Marie Stopes on birth control. I read these when I was only just into my teens and pored over her illustrated midwifery books, all describing birth as a spontaneous life event

  The essence of her child-rearing philosophy was respect for the child. She aimed to develop self-confidence, and also awareness of others’ needs, rather than being wrapped up in one’s own concerns. It is not a matter of trimming children’s natural impulses so that they will fit into polite society. The well-behaved, obedient child may turn out to be the most disturbed adult.

  A baby is not a clean slate on which we etch the pattern we want. Nor a feral animal that must be tamed. We do not own our children. Withdrawal of love, or the threat of it, teaches a child that she is only valued when she conforms.

  This is how I brought up my children, too. I believe that the world needs non-conformist individuals who are not afraid to challenge the system, dare to stand up to tyranny, are critical of socio-economic and political systems, and committed to constructive change. That is unlikely if we train them to obey us like pet dogs.

  Then there was pacifism. Mother got to know the Reverend Dick Sheppard of St Martins in the Fields, Trafalgar Square, with whom she worked as a pacifist and activist. He was probably the greatest human being whom I encountered early in my life.

  Dick Sheppard made his church a sanctuary for the distressed and destitute, and for many years the crypt was a haven for drunks. St Martin is the patron saint of drunkards and more than 6,000 indigents found a refuge there every year. It was also a sanctuary for injured soldiers returning from France who poured off the boat train at Charing Cross Station nearby and went directly to St Martins, knowing they would be welcomed and cared for.


  He was a man of enormous compassion and shining vision, and I remember as a small child listening to him discussing strategy with my mother and speaking at open-air meetings she had arranged.

  Some of my earliest memories are of peace marches. Mother was a passionate member of the peace movement. There were huge banners and one big rally in a park in Taunton where the central symbol was a tank captured from the Germans in the First World War. Dick Sheppard, Patrick Figgis of the Peace Pledge Union and the MP George Lansbury were among the speakers. I sat on a hard, slatted chair near the front of the crowd for what seemed like hours, as speech followed speech, and, unable to hold on any longer, to my shame, wet my knickers. I felt the piddle trickling down onto the grass, and hoped no one noticed.

  One birthday was memorable. I was eight or nine years old. Mother talked to me a lot about poverty and injustice, and when she saw a long dole queue of bedraggled figures outside what we would now call a jobcentre, she invited them all back for my birthday party, including a band of street musicians. They stuffed themselves with cake, trifle and ice cream. There were balloons, crackers and live music. Birthdays don’t come like that every day!

  On Remembrance Sunday we honoured those in the Armed Forces who had given their lives for their country, but did not wear the usual red poppies. Instead we wore a white silk poppy which signalled that we were against all war and honoured those who strove for peace. I remember feeling proud to wear this distinctive symbol of peace. It bore a huge responsibility to work for understanding between nations and try to solve conflicts by non-violent means. The impressive Remembrance Ceremony on 11 November in Whitehall seemed to bear little relevance to Jesus’s life and message, and glorified war and violence.