KARL D. writes:

Here is an article about a midwife’s assistant who calls herself a “doula” and who photographs couples during home births. Is it just me or are these photos disturbing? Besides having a very intimate sexual feel to them, the moment is clearly all about the mother and her “partner” more than about the birth of their child. Not to mention the fact that she has a virtual audience with her two sisters and someone else watching on as she gives birth in a kiddie pool in her living room. You would think she was Cleopatra getting ready to birth the new Caesar the way she has a roomful of people fawning all over her.

— Comments —

Jane S. writes:

It isn’t just you, Karl. The photos are disturbing. Especially the obvious way they were posing for the camera. The whole thing looks staged.

Carolyn writes:

Karl D. seems determined to find bad things in the photos of the birth of Katherine Marincat. He begins by referring to Jackie Dives as a woman “who calls herself a ‘doula.'” Doula, of course, means (female) servant in Greek, and is an accepted English word for a woman who assists a new mother in a non-medical capacity before, during or after childbirth. Does Mr. D. have evidence to suggest Jackie Dives is *not* a doula? If so, he should present it, not slander her by implication.

The photos do indeed have an intimate feel to them. And, as the mother of six children, I will tell Mr. D. that childbirth is indeed a very intimate experience. As far as their having a sexual feel, I think perhaps he’s confusing the words (and concepts) “sexual” and “sensuous.” Pictures of the laboring mother with her husband are interspersed with one of her sister giving her a back massage, one of another woman (another of her sisters?) with a comforting hand on her forehead, and another of a third woman (presumably her third sister) putting a warm towel on the back of her neck. Does Mr. D. find the photos of solicitous sisters sexual? Does he find those of the parents with their newborn daughter sexual? (Those two categories comprise most of the pictures, by the way.) Or is it the ones where the laboring woman and her husband touch foreheads, or he massages her belly? These photos are intimate and sensuous–but then so is childbirth.

As to the photos being “all about the mother and her ‘partner’ [actually, the article primarily refers to Mr. Marincat as Mrs. Marincat’s “husband”] more than about the birth of the child”, how would Karl D. suggest emphasizing baby Katherine, in a visual art like photography, before she is born (and therefore visible)? I would think he might find photos of her head crowning, and her emerging from her mother’s body–which are the only way I can think of to place more emphasis on “the birth of the child”–“disturbing”, too intimate, and probably “sexual.”  The four photos of mother, father and newborn daughter together were lovely. But the reality of birth, of course, is that the baby isn’t visible for most of it. It is just the mother laboring for long, hard hours. So a photo essay in which the majority of images don’t show the baby speaks the truth.

Finally, Mr. D. reads into the presence of Mr. Marincat, Mrs. Marincat’s three sisters and her parents, “a roomful of people fawning all over her.” Does he think women give birth alone in hospitals? You’re surrounded by a roomful of people there as well. The difference is that there, the principals are merely paid strangers doing a job. At home, you can choose solitude, if that’s what you want, or you can surround yourself with loving family, as Mr. and Mrs. Marincat did. It’s sad to me that Mr. D. somehow manages to twist aunts laughing and crying at the miracle of their niece’s birth into something negative.

Certainly there is a narcissistic element in much modern interest in childbirth. But Mr. D. fails to prove it by reading his own preconceptions into this photo essay.

 Laura writes:

I couldn’t disagree with you more. It was not inappropriate for Karl to refer to a “so-called doula.” Taking stylized, pornographic photos of the mother-to-be does not fit into the job description of a doula. And, yes, the photos are pornographic. Mr. and Mrs. Marincat are deliberately made to look as if they are engaging in sexual foreplay and Mrs. M. is half-naked. There is nothing wrong with a woman in childbirth being caressed by her husband, though most women in labor just aren’t in the mood for it, and there is nothing wrong with being half-naked, but these things should be private. These  photos are for public display. The people in the room are so many paparazzi and it’s sickening that anyone would violate the intimacy of this occasion in that way (and interfere with the attention of the midwives). As far as the emphasis being on the mother (and father) and not on the child, there is a way to recognize the child other than photographing her as she is emerging from the womb and that is by treating this event as the momentous private, non-sexual occasion that it is. Mrs. Marincat is now a mother. If she ever has a son, he will be intensely embarrassed by these photos, but then long before he views them he will have realized just what shallow narcissists his parents are.

You write:

 [A]s the mother of six children, I will tell Mr. D. that childbirth is indeed a very intimate experience.

That’s right. It is intimate and intimacy by definition is private. If childbirth is not private, it is no longer intimate. It can never be entirely private because doctors and nurses and midwives are necessary, but spectators are not necessary.

The image has taken over every aspect of family life. Once people become mesmerized by themselves, there is no limit to what can be put on display. It’s disgusting. What next? Perhaps parents will get themselves photographed as they are engaged in the sex act so the child can someday see how he was conceived. After all, isn’t that sacred and intimate and beautiful too? And why not have people in the room? It’s an important event! They should cheer the parents on and take pictures too.

Mary writes:

Shall we call this the Demi Moore effect? I can’t help but think of Annie Lebovitz and all the degrading things she has convinced celebrities to do over the years for her “work”.

In trying to defend doulas and natural childbirth I think Carolyn misses the intentions of this photographer, which appear to be to create a buzz for her work by finding a previously unexplored area of intimacy and exploiting it for career purposes, using a beautiful mother and handsome father, both willing participants. I’ll assume the very fit and good-looking mother was taking the lead of her “doula” – yes, I use quotes because doulas should serve and protect the mothers when they are most vulnerable – in these shots. The father is also good-looking and who gets tired of good-looking people no matter what they’re doing, I guess. It would be interesting to know whether this photographer has any interest in shooting and publishing pictures of average looking, overweight mothers and their possibly soft in the middle, balding husbands naked in a birthing tub together.

The pictures of the parents in the tub are clearly intended to have a sexual edge to them – if not they would have ended up in the reject pile, so obviously sexual are they. One moment he’s outside the tub and she’s in the tub in underwear; then he’s in and she’s without underwear and appears naked. Since she we can’t see her belly his close proximity at that moment defies any other explanation than sex for those who might not know it was a birth. I feel that since they are included in the story this was intentional. Birth is not an intimate moment between a husband and wife; it is the moment of all moments between mother and child.

I don’t like the pictures at all, but if they were just of the mother and her sisters, etc. I would find them less offensive; historically sisters would have had a role in the birth. In light of today’s world, it’s almost poignant and comical to imagine our fathers and grandfathers with cigars and boxes of candy waiting for the news in the hospital waiting room. Before the age of hospital births and doctors, women indeed did manage all births. This was natural and good and the woman’s dignity and natural modesty were protected at the most intimate of moments. All For the Love of Mothers: Memoirs of a Catholic Midwife is a fantastic book about midwifery at the turn of the 19^th century, by the way.

Laura writes:

I agree with Mary, except that I find it hard to believe this mother was simply being used by the doula. Most people are conscious of being photographed when they are photographed. A woman who feels comfortable being photographed in her underwear has lost a good bit of modesty and discretion.

Also, mothers and sisters shouldn’t be in the room during a delivery unless they are assisting with the birth. Those moments are critical and things can go wrong. Extra people should not be around. Immediately afterward is fine.

Bruce B. writes:

You’re probably aware of this, but there’s a series of cable TV shows consisting of video journals of childbirth. I know some of them are on cable network The Learning Channel. Have you seen any of these and what do you think of them?

 Laura writes:

No, I wasn’t aware of that and don’t know anything about the shows. If a woman is taped or photographed during birth for educational purposes, I don’t see anything wrong with that, but I gather that is not the main purpose in the shows you mention.

Roger G. writes:

My grandfather (the one in the photo) used to tell this:

A man was walking down the street and saw a large, stylized timepiece in the window.  He pulled out his own watch, and thought to himself, you know, this could use a good cleaning.

So he goes in, walks up to the man at the counter, and says,”I’d like to get my watch cleaned.”  The counterman replies, “I’m a mohel.

The first man thinks, did I walk in the wrong door?  And he goes back outside, but sure enough, there’s the watch.

So he walks back in  and says, “But there’s a watch in the window.”  And the counterman answers, “So what did you want me to put in the window?”

 Laura writes:

Hm.

Carolyn writes:

 I’ve been at a fair number of births, both my own and others’, and I find these photos neither stylized nor pornographic. This is what birth is like! Most women are half-naked when they give birth! And to interpret that, or to interpret a husband touching and comforting his wife in her pain as pornographic, boggles my mind. [Laura writes: I thought I made it abundantly clear that there is a difference between nudity in private and in public. You are distorting what I said.]

Mary’s notion that “birth is not an intimate moment between a husband and wife” also leaves me speechless. Perhaps it wasn’t for Mary, or perhaps she has no children. For me, and I know for many other women, birth is a very intimate moment between husband and wife, as well as between mother and child, and father and child. I know this because one of my closest friends is a midwife, and through her I have talked with a number of midwives over the years about many, many childbirth experiences. Mary can argue by fiat all she wants, but that doesn’t make it so.

For you to describe the mother’s parents and sisters as “paparazzi” also truly boggles my mind. Her family didn’t “violate the intimacy of the occasion”! They were invited by the new parents to share in it! You say “spectators aren’t necessary.” But members of your immediate family at an important life occasion of yours are hardly spectators. They’re participants, there to share your life with you. And because you didn’t (I presume) choose to have your family members at the births of your children, if you have children, doesn’t mean it’s wrong for other people to make different choices in that regard.

Laura writes:

Anything I could say in response would only be a repetition of what I have already said.

Karl D. writes:

One thing I would like to mention that seems to have been missed is that the couple in these photos is unmarried. [Laura writes: I did not closely read the article and am not particularly interested in these people. Carolyn referred to them as “Mr. and Mrs. Marincat.” I’m not sure where she got the idea that they were married.] It’s something so typical these days that we almost fail to notice it. In todays backwards world marriage seems to come after children and not before. As far as the people in the room during the birth? I wonder if Mrs. Marincat has any brothers? And if so, would that change Carolyns mind if there were a bunch of men standing around watching their sister half naked, legs akimbo in a kiddie pool with her half naked boyfriend? As you pointed out, why not photograph the moment of conception with cheering family members and even friends close at hand? Since birth is such a beautiful and natural human experience, why exclude all the males in the family?

How about death? Death is a form of re-birth. It is also extremely private and intimate. Maybe we should stock hospital rooms full of bereaved family members and drag out the tripods and camera equipment to document the poor souls’ final moments? Doctors and clergy could do the photo’s like this “doula.”.Why must everything be photographed or filmed today? It seems the experience itself and the memories of the event itself are no longer sufficient.

 Carolyn writes:

[Note: This part was edited from Carolyn’s comment above because I thought her remarks were too long. I have added them here because it does address what she thinks is a valid reason for the photographs.]

You say there’s nothing wrong with a woman being photographed or even taped during childbirth for educational purposes–and this photographer tells us that that’s her intention. It’s a worthy goal. Birth is portrayed very unrealistically—and very frighteningly—on television, and in real life it has until recently simply not been talked about in recent times. As a result, it’s scary for many young women. And because fear complicates labor, that makes it more dangerous for both mother and baby. I know several young women–good mothers, not voyeurs–who have pored over photos and videos of other women’s labor and delivery experiences for just the purpose Ms. Dives cites: to demystify and normalize childbirth, making it less frightening and as a result safer.

Carolyn adds:

I “got the idea” that they were married because the article refers to him several times as her “husband.”

 Laura writes:

Ah, okay. Then you made a valid inference. I apologize for implying that you had no reason for referring to them as married.

Are they married?

Again, I totally reject your point that these are not stylized or pornographic. What about teenagers who fear sexual intercourse? Should they pore over photos of couples copulating to make themselves feel less anxious? Many people are afraid of death. Should they pore over photos of people in their last intimate moments? Should photographers intrude into death scenes for educational purposes?

Lucy S. R. Austen writes:

“Again, I totally reject your point that these are not stylized or pornographic. What about teenagers who fear sexual intercourse? Should they pore over photos of couples copulating?”

This comparison breaks down quickly. A teenager afraid of sex (when things work well) has time to wait until he is married and then slowly initiate a comfortable sexual relationship with a loving spouse. A woman who is pregnant has a limited amount of time in which to come to grips with impending labor and delivery, and to be able to relax into the process to the extent that labor can progress normally and provide a safe outcome for baby and mother.

Laura writes:

These photos were in a major newspaper. They were not aimed specifically at new mothers. Besides, I fail to see how the photo of the woman in the pool in an apparent state of ecstasy with her husband was in any way a realistic preparation for delivery. Please, don’t write to me and tell me that it is realistic. That’s just laughable. And if the point was to prepare new mothers, may I please see the picture of the placenta? That’s realistic. You say the photos were not stylized, then where was the blood in the pool?

Ms. Austen writes:

Unstaged photos at an unstaged homebirth do sometimes look like this. I’ve seen them from more than one source. Camera angles, etc., play into that. The gentleman who originally submitted the link to the article was complaining because the photos showed too much of an intimate thing. Now the problem with them is that they don’t show enough?

Laura writes:

And did you see those photos in a major newspaper? Did people who did not know the couple look at them?

Now the problem with them is that they don’t show enough?

I am not the one arguing in favor of these photos. You are. I am saying that even in light of your claim that they are educational, they are not serving a worthy public purpose.

Ms. Austen writes:

No, they have not been in a major newspaper, but they have been published on the Internet with the intention of sharing them with a wider community of readers. Clearly, for many of the readers of this blog, the photos are not helpful, and in fact, as pornographic images are harmful. That does not mean that “they are not serving a worthy public purpose,” or that they are not “educational,” for others.” I, and others like me, have found photographs such as these helpful.

 Laura writes:

We’re talking about a woman appearing in public in her underwear and half naked. Female immodesty is wrong. I don’t care whether it’s on the Internet, in a newspaper or for a wide circle of friends. Now, maybe you find such photos “helpful,” but you may consider that they violate the privacy of the families involved (even if those families are eager to have their privacy violated). Modesty preserves a delicate sphere and the exclusiveness of family bonds.

Ms. Austen writes:

“Female immodesty is wrong. . . . Modesty preserves a delicate sphere and the exclusiveness of family bonds.”

Our cultural norms of female modesty are not universal, either culturally or internationally, and when our conception of what female modesty ought to be interferes with the health and safety of women and babies, the standard ought to be reconsidered.

 Laura writes:

It doesn’t matter what the differing cultural norms are. I realize pagan cultures are very accepting of nudity. But, the human being is universally sacred and public nudity or semi-nudity is a desecration, particularly of the woman, who carries life within her and nurtures with her body.

I think your point that photographs like this protect the health and safety of women is just too ridiculous to take seriously.

Ms. Austen writes:

“I think your point that photographs like this protect the health and safety of women is just too ridiculous to take seriously.”

Then we have reached the point of total communication breakdown in that conversation. I’m sorry to hear it. It seems important to me for us, as Christians and conservatives, to be able to have peaceful conversations with people with whom we disagree. When we move into the realm of contempt and anger in our communicating, we lose any opportunity for the person on the other side of the table to really hear us, and hence any chance of really changing their mind. If you had disagreed with posing a new argument that shows how my point about modesty standards and human health isn’t applicable to this situation, I would have been able to consider your argument and we could have continued in conversation. But by dismissing my argument as ridiculous, you’ve shut down dialogue. How can I respond to that? It also comes across as rudeness.

Laura writes:

By saying your comment was ridiculous, I was acknowledging that the conversation between us had reached a dead-end.

Ms. Austen writes:

“I suppose the response I would give to your statement, “I think your point that photographs like this protect the health and safety of women is just too ridiculous to take seriously,” would be this:

If a woman sees this article online, and it causes her to consider having a home birth, and she eventually chooses to have a home birth, she may be avoiding many of the potential dangers of a hospital birth. Unncessary interventions, which are common in hospital births, commonly lead to prolonged labors, fetal distress, and emergency C-sections that could have been prevented. Those in turn contribute to difficulty in establishing breastfeeding, and to post-partum depression. That is how photographs like these can contribute to a woman’s health and safety and that of her baby.

Laura writes:

I’m all for helpful information about home births. It is not necessary for a woman to pose as this woman and her husband have done to promote home delivery. The written word can convey much more than this. Besides, these photos only show a few glimpses of the experience and distort it. Most women in labor would not want their husband in their face in a bathing suit, wearing a goofy smile and appearing as if he is ready for something else.

Mary writes:

The father in the birthing tub – well, I don’t know what to make of that. I hate to say it but the guy in these pictures seems, well…girly. He’s providing the soft, gentle, womanly comfort that women by nature are so much better at offering – the kind of comfort a laboring woman needs. I did natural deliveries for my babies and my midwife gave me whatever I needed in terms of comfort even though my husband was there with me. And no camera, yet I remember it like it was yesterday.

I appreciate that young women are nervous about childbirth, especially with the yawning chasm of years that is forming between the generations, the resulting lack of womanly wisdom now and the fact that many fewer babies are being born etc etc. But c’mon, this is the information age, there is already so much information out there – we saw birth films in sex ed in the 70s and twenty years ago, I saw videos in Lamaze classes, etc. of real women giving births and all the ups and downs. None of them were wearing cute black bras, etc.; No, this is not really about helpful information. It’s about the ridiculous level of documentation that we insist on in the modern age.

Ian writes:

I am amazed that a couple of your readers find nothing objectionable about the photos taken by the “doula.”  I would echo a point you made already:  if it were my mother in those photos, I would be disgusted and ashamed.  The pregnancy is clearly just a pretext to post erotic photographs.

Put it this way:  I would not feel comfortable looking at these photos at work.  In fact, when I did look at them in a public place, I realized I had subconsciously turned my laptop screen so no one else could see my monitor.

Also, if the photos weren’t meant to be sexual, why is the husband not wearing a shirt?

Something about the husband in the photos makes me think effete wimp who lets his wife wear the pants in the relationship.

By the way, some of your readers may get a kick out of this classic Dave Barry article on “natural child birth.”

Laura writes:

The man is very effeminate, which means he will be fairly useless as a husband and father. A woman needs a man not a nurturing goofball who will rub her back when she’s in labor.

Here’s what I imagine. Someday, this little girl will look at these photos and wonder why it was her parents were once so intimate when they are no longer together.

Jane writes:

This doula/birth photographer is touting home birth as “intimate, precious, and sacred” to promote her services —  in The Daily Mail, right next to headlines that read:

“She walks all over him! Leonardo DiCaprio grovels during kinky sex scene with Margot Robbie who pushes her stiletto into his face in new Wolf Of Wall Street trailer.”

and

“Not a care in the world! Rihanna uploads a slew of sexy bikini photos just hours after ex-boyfriend Chris Brown enters rehab”

Etc.

And readers think the doula isn’t sexing up home birth as a marketing ploy? Oh, pul-lease.

Mary writes:

Jane wrote: “And readers think the doula isn’t sexing up home birth as a marketing ploy? Oh, pul-lease.”

My thoughts exactly. It’s a total win-win for the doula at the expense of decency, but that’s nothing new – decency hasn’t hindered “progress” in many years.

Carolyn wrote: “Mary’s notion that “birth is not an intimate moment between a husband and wife” also leaves me speechless.”

Carolyn here conflates two distinct levels of intimacy: the sweet intimacy of parents after a birth with the incomparably profound intimacy of mother and baby during childbirth, unique in all human experience. The father interacts with the mother as an observer; mother and baby are actual participants and their experience is clearly dominant. This is an important distinction and one born out by history, for fathers present during childbirth are a relatively new development exactly because they are not essential.

Carolyn and her midwife friend are not advancing anything new but in fact are advancing the return to a beautiful tradition, the tradition of midwives and experienced mothers helping women at their most vulnerable time. I support this tradition as well – participated in it – so I am not exactly speechless but simply bewildered that the protection of the dignity and privacy of the mothers, part and parcel of that tradition, is not understood and also being advanced by Carolyn; and also why she doesn’t seem to recognize soft exploitation and another bit of cultural decline when it is staring her in the face.

 Laura writes:

Women have been midwives for most of history, and obviously many have done their work with remarkable skill, energy and care. But the feminist halo that surrounds the midwife, who is often depicted as the victim of a male takeover of the business, is an interesting subject. The story is more complicated than it appears. Many midwives did a small number of deliveries per year and thus were unable to attain technical competence. Catharina Schrader was a Dutch midwife who delivered between 3,000 and 4,000 babies, with very low infant and maternal mortality for the time, between the years of 1693 and 1740. She was more of a professional than the typical midwife of the time, having been the wife of a surgeon, whom she helped in his practice. Upon her husband’s death, she took up midwifery to support her six children. Her diaries, published as The Mother and Child Were Saved (Rodopi, 1984), make up one of the most detailed accounts by a European midwife of that era. In her journals, she rails against some of the other midwives, referring to “dreadful know-nothings,” a “messy bungler” and midwives who “tortured” their patients. I realize it is unseemly today to reproach anyone who is involved in home birthing, but she was free with her criticisms at that time. Schrader, a devout Calvinist who prayed to God for the “wretched that I have to see” and those who are “in misery and need,” also referred to some of the unmarried women whom she delivered as “whores.” I can only imagine what she would make of the vanity and eroticism of these birthing photos.

Nov. 4, 2013

Ellie writes:

I finally followed the link in the above commentary yesterday and it took me all evening to form a calm commentary.   When did “childbirth”, a passage in the life of a woman, her child and hopefully her husband (although that is more and more rare these days) become the “birth experience”?  It is fraught with deep emotion, to be sure, but also danger.   What is wrong with these parents who sit there in a tub of bloody water, probably with stool and meconium, posing for pictures while their child is GRAY?!  That baby needed to be dried, wrapped, and possibly a bit of blow-by oxygen to “pink her up.”   Where is the midwife?  Why is she not attending to her patient?  Is our need to have everything pleasant and comfortable and posted on Facebook so strong that we allow children to lose brain cells while we pose for our closeup?  The child’s color vastly improved with the third picture, but how long was that interval?  Three or four minutes at least, at the most vulnerable time that child will ever have! WHO was watching out for her health?

While I disagree with the new trend of home births, as I have heard too many horror stories from my OB nurse friends, if your readers are going to participate in this latest fad, please ask (beg) them to hire a LICENSED midwife, who has supervision from a board certified OB or family practice physician, and to listen to the advice given, even if it means a less than wonderful “childbirth experience.”  Women and children frequently died prior to the advent of modern, sanitary obstetrics (still do, in many places). Painfully.  When my daughter-in-law asked me for help to complete her “birth plan” prior to the birth of her child, I gave her this answer.  “Your plan is to leave the hospital in good health, with a healthy daughter, and to accomplish that with as little pain and indignity as possible.”  She did so, by the way, and did beautifully.

 Thank you, Mrs. Wood, for allowing me to vent about this.   Have a good week.

Alex writes:

It is sad that there is even the need to point out why exactly these photos are repulsive, when in the past, our immediate, visceral reaction to them would be enough for us to know they are wrong.

This reliance on our innate moral judgement, our instinctive ability to tell right from wrong instantly, without any need for logical analysis, to know the immoral, the ridiculous, the disgusting, the evil when we see it, has been bred out of us over the decades of relentless propaganda. This especially concerns matters of sex, family and race – men having sex and “marrying” each other, two lesbians producing a child, homosexuals adopting children, people changing their sex, women pursuing careers like men, whites marrying blacks, and so on. It has taken the Left a great effort to make it our instinct instead to suppress and reject our natural, inborn revulsion at such things, to make us believe that it is always and necessarily wrong and makes us evil, but it has succeeded in this crucial effort.