so for the freebirther the pregnant mother becomes like a wilderness area that should be free from human intervention; unfortunately I think both land and bodies suffer from this approach (just musing here forgive any typos or other errors)

does any of this make sense to anyone else or should I just go to sleep? basically I’m trying to tie the interest in freebirth to a preservationist mindset that believes in a noninterventionist approach to land management (which I think is how average Americans understand the goals of nature preservation)

one problem is they think that knowledge resides in their individual bodies alone, which of course has instincts and hormones and autonomous functions, but in much the same way that you wouldn’t have grasslands and massive bison herds without active fire management or towering and abundant forests with unbroken canopies without active tending by indigenous peoples so too can you not have natural childbirth without midwives with knowledge of how to care for mothers/ babies

of course this presumes a lot about what nature is and what it means to be natural. I think my point is that the management and active stewardship of the land by humans is ancient. there is no nature in itself untouched by humans; wilderness is a myth in a sense. I think the freebirth movement longs for the cultural knowledge of how to have healthy human birth experiences but looks for it in the wrong place

the freebirth movement, at least from my limited experience of being married to someone interested in it, seems to stem from that implicit bias—it assumes as already true that 1. nature will do best when left to itself, and 2. that humans are separate from nature. so it, I think, is a misguided attempt to reconcile the two: if we want to be more natural then we should do things naturally

the preservationist mindset, which I think is fairly pervasive among most Americans when issues of land usage arises, seems to me to have as a foundation a belief that nature will, if left to itself, do what’s best. implicit in that is the removal of humans from the equation entirely, as if humans were separate from nature (many, myself included, have beaten/are beating this drum before)

frolate