Bearing Meaning. The Language of Birth

A passionate placement of childbearing at the core of human culture and society, Bearing Meaning is that rare combination of warm and genuine experience with profound, important scholarship. From Homer to obstetric texts to Our Bodies, Ourselves, and where the humanities and social sciences overlap and intertwine, Robbie Pfeufer Kahn has crafted a beautiful book that awards the meaning of childbearing to all, not just to women or to families with children. Taking into account how the politics of patriarchy has sought to define and control the birth process, Kahn liberates and releases this central human experience into the heart of society and culture where it can be shared, enjoyed, and understood in greater depth than it has ever been before. As personal and touching as it is far-reaching and analytical, Bearing Meaning is fresh, original, and exciting, moving effortlessly among textual analyses, social theories, and the invaluable experience of motherhood. Kahn makes an unprecedented contribution to the understanding of the maternal in culture and society - which will, in turn, have a powerful impact not only on the reading and teaching of standard materials on birth and motherhood but on the rethinking of social reform as well.

"Brims with ideas and life. It starts with the Iliad, ends with La Leche League, and in between covers everything [Kahn] has learned from study, activism, and experience. The result is a book that is rich and full." -- Carol A. Brown, Qualitative Sociology