Childbirth in South Asia

Abstract

This book illustrates the continuing challenges as well as the new paradoxes linked to childbirth in South Asia. It brings together anthropologists and sociologists working in different contexts (at the hospital, within the community) and in a variety of settings (rural, urban) in India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. While women in Western countries have pressed for more home deliveries, and for the mitigation of some of the effects of the male appropriation and over-medicalized experience of motherhood, most developing countries are promoting institutionalized deliveries and stigmatizing poor women who deliver at home. In addition, new information technologies are being pressed into service; for example, to identify high-risk mothers and to offer them advice through social media. Such an evolution is particularly salient in South Asia where childbirth has long been an issue, not only for the colonial government, which sometimes used women’s poor health to justify imperialist interests, but also for independent successor states, who have implemented decisive schemes within the last decade, after being long accused of neglecting women’s healthcare. Despite the increased attention being paid to maternal and child health, and the steady rise in institutional deliveries in South Asia, progress on reducing maternal and infant mortality has been slow and halting, with significant disparities across regions and social groups. Far from withering away, traditional birth attendants have seen a resurgence, in part due to the demeaning conditions offered to poor, low-caste, rural women in formal health settings. With this backdrop, the authors explore the ethical and social implications of the changes being introduced in the technologies and social arrangements of childbirth in South Asia.