Mother with Child: Transformations Through Childbirth - Softcover

Rabuzzi, Kathryn Allen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253208270 ISBN 13: 9780253208279

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1994

Synopsis

"Rabuzzi rejects the status quo, presenting viable, often spiritual, alternatives to prevailing high-tech, patriarchal models of childbirth." — Booklist "Excellent." — The Reader's Review "A lovely book.... It is a book for anyone wishing to reexamine and reclaim birth's potential for sacredness." — Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage Rabuzzi, author of The Sacred and the Feminine and Motherself, contends that childbearing has been denigrated, denied, and devalued. This book is intended to help women rename, re-ritualize, reinterpret, and reframe childbearing for themselves and their partners.

About this title

About the Author

KATHRYN ALLEN RABUZZI teaches English at Syracuse University, is the author of Motherself: A Mythic Analysis of Motherhood and The Sacred and the Feminine: Towards a Theology of Housework, and is a founding editor of the journal Literature and Medicine.

From Booklist

In the undervalued tradition of feminist authors Barbara Katz Rothman and Robbie Davis-Floyd, Rabuzzi rejects the status quo, presenting viable, often spiritual, alternatives to prevailing high-tech, patriarchal models of childbirth. Since the "empowering and transformative experience [of birth] has been `stolen,'" says Rabuzzi, she wants women to "rename, reritualize, reinterpret and reframe" birth for themselves. From her exploration of preconception--an intended pun--and conception, through pregnancy (termed a natural initiation process), delivery (a time of potential revelation), and postpartum, she delves not only into such practical matters as miscarriage and lactation but also into more mystical concerns, such as rebirthing and false pregnancy. Mother covers a lot of ground and is somewhat academic--not an easy read but worth it. Jo Peer-Haas

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253208270
• ISBN 13: 9780253208279
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240