Labour Pains and Labour Power: Women and Childbearing in India.

Abstract

The authors investigate childbearing in India as a socially organized phenomenon. By focussing on childbearing in two north Indian villages we demonstrate the dramatic impact of womens subordination on female reproductive health and the survival of young children especially girls....Our analysis also casts serious doubt on the current advocacy of schemes to train traditional birth attendants in north India....This book is based on data collected during two main field-trips to Bijnor District in western Uttar Pradesh (from February 1982 until June 1983 and during August and September 1985) and during brief visits in 1984 and 1986. Aspects considered include women as property; class and womens work; attitudes toward pregnancy; childbirth; postpartum health care and cultural restrictions; domestic policies and ethnicity; discrimination against female children; attitudes toward family size contraception and the value of children; and the probable impact of government policy on childbearing and womens status. (EXCERPT)