Senior Theses & Projects

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Browsing Senior Theses & Projects by Subject "Childbirth -- Psychological aspects"

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    Birthing Doulas: A Meditation on the Liminality of Birth Workers
    (2013) Ross, Alexa; Nadkarni, Maya
    This thesis is premised on the argument that three subjects are born in the process of childbirth-baby, mother, and doula. If childbirth is seen as a rite of passage, or a ritual that accompanies some kind of transition between states (Turner 1987:4), we can understand each of these three subjects as engaged with different yet interrelated transformations. In this thesis I apply Victor Turner's (1987) concept of liminality, or period between states, to doulas as I argue that the role of a doula is a liminal one, consistently existing "betwixt and between" worlds, and that there is also a more defined process of becoming that a doula undergoes in order to begin her work supporting women in birth. I argue that a doula's more defined process of becoming involves confronting biomedicine's discourse about women's bodies being weak and defective, a task that is catalyzed by witnessing the power of birthing women. Witnessing birth proves to be a transformative process that compels doulas to forgo impulses for control and embrace the role of a servant. Out of this transformation a doula develops understandings of birth that are new but not without "narrow limits" (Turner 1987: IS). In addition to Turner's concept of liminality, I argue that Emily Martin's theory of women's embodied experience illuminates a doula's process of becoming. In addition to and instead of the idea that a doula's embodied experience "can and does contain a critical standpoint" (1987:200). I argue that the experience of witnessing the embodied experience of another woman giving birth fosters a critical standpoint within doulas.