Convincing White Women that Birth is Painless Will End 'Race Suicide'
Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 12:36AM
A new method of analgesia that required constant monitoring also greatly influenced the move to the hospital. Developed in Freiburg, Germany, in 1914, “Twilight Sleep” used a combination of scopolamine, an amnesiac, and morphine, a painkiller, to remove all memory of birth. Women in Germany waxed ecstatic about this method; they reported going to sleep and awakening to find their beautiful baby lying in a bassinet. So compelling were accounts in women’s magazines that upper-class U.S. women traveled to Germany to give birth, approximately at the outbreak of World War I. Early feminists supported Twilight Sleep as promoting faster recovery from birth and thus helping to equalize the sexes in public life. Conservatives thought it was the answer to “race suicide,” the failure of Anglo-Saxon women to have enough babies to outnumber immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. If childbirth were totally painless, then Anglo-Saxon women “should” want to have large families. From about 1930 to 1960, Twilight Sleep was the preferred analgesic in U.S. hospitals.
Hospital births began to increase in frequency as more women demanded Twilight Sleep, but Twilight Sleep was being used by some to lure white women to the hospital to make more white babies? In the meantime, feminists were touting memory-free, drugged birth as healthier by saying that it got women back up on their feet again more quickly after childbirth so they could help equalize the sexes? And obstetricians launched racist and classist attacks during this time on midwives in order to protect what they felt was the dignity of obstetric arts and their only way to create a single standard was to medicalize childbirth by bringing it into the hospital?
The co-optation of birth and women’s bodies… a time-honored tradition, apparently.
Mankiller, W., (1998). The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History
Reader Comments (152)
I absolutely LOVE when you go back and take a look at the history of birth. Sadly this is disturbing, and if twilight sleep was still being used today, I am sure they would still be using this in extreme racist groups!
Hah, the editor/author is named Mankiller.
That picture of the old school nursery just breaks my heart.
Yeah, when moms were anesthetized they obviously couldn't care for their babies for awhile. The history of the newborn nursery is pretty interesting.
A must-read on this topic is the new book "Deliver Me From Pain." I think it's vying for first place right now on my list of the best books to read about birth. I knew a lot of the things she discussed, but not in that level of detail. It's fascinating to see how the development of obstetric anesthesia is absolutely central to the evolution of obstetric practice and hospital maternity care.
This season's Mad Men had an episode showing twilight sleep. Interesting and disturbing.....and my Grandma did remember it (and how awful she was treated under the assumption the wouldn't remember) even though they apparently used it on her. :(
My grandmother speaks very eloquently about her Twilight Sleep births in the 50s, in both the US and in Germany, and how terrible they were. She describes being left completly alone in unmedicated labor, scared and needing support, and then having the doctor put a mask on her and then waking up to a baby, not remembering anything. At least in New York, it was still going on in the early 70s-- my mother in law, who gave birth the first time in 1973, had a natural childbirth until pushing, at which point she was put under and my husband was pulled out with forceps. She remembers nothing of his birth and first few hours, either.
My mom is a labor and delivery nurse, and has been since 1971, and remembers the Twilight Sleep births vividly. She was a huge Lamaze advocate and was part of the movement for natural childbirth in the 70s.
I think it's important to note that the "racism" here is Western (Anglo-Saxon) European vs. Eastern European. The history of the IQ test is also interesting -- one of the flaws in it was that early IQ tests asked questions about Americana -- who won the 19?? World Series; who was the pitcher for the Yankees in 1903, etc. Questions most Americans knew, but few foreigners, who might not have even been in the country at the time, or were working too hard and/or didn't know the language, would not have known. This led to some population/immigration quotas to keep the OBVIOUSLY stupider Eastern Europeans (who were more Johnny-come-lately immigrants than Western Europeans) out of the United States. Sure, it was also used for other races (as we use the term today); but the original use of "race" was much more narrow than it is used now -- and that's the sense it's used in this piece. People would often speak of "the race of the French" or whatever -- it was not used primarily to describe "the races" (black, white, Asian, Native American, Australian Aborigine, and whatever other artificial people groups are currently en vogue) that are commonly used today.
"Artificial people groups"
What does that mean?
Ditto Rixa on "Deliver Me From Pain" - really goes in-depth on this topic (although I would have loved even more in-depth!)
Interesting because Amy Tuteur just posted on the "science-based medicine" blog about the "roots" of unmedicated birth in similar racial stuff (Grantly Dick-Read apparently talked about the same issues). She was using it to slam natural birth by saying it had a basis in these same racial fears. It would be nice to send her this link, and ask if we can all just agree that people love to control women through reproduction/reproductive processes so we're basically going to find this stuff cropping up anywhere we look.
Rixa, I'm due for an Amazon order. I'll sneak that one in with the holiday gifts. Thanks!
My mother had Twilight Sleep with all four of her children (1959, 1960, 1963, 1971). She did not like to talk about it. Apparently the forceps did some damage to her, as well, and she went through quite a bit of postpartum pain. She also ended up with a hysterectomy at 40 and a lot of bladder issues in her 60s, and I often wonder if those were connected.
My sister (older) had three c-section pregnancies and just recently had to have a hysterectomy at 49. And I had my unnecesarean. I often wonder if not having any idea of birth to learn about from my mother didn't contribute to both my sister's and mine c/sections--we could not ask my mom for ideas on how to cope with labor, she remembered almost nothing about our births. We got the impression growing up that birth was obviously traumatic and best not talked about in any detail, and for me at least, that definitely contributed to my own fears as my son's birth approached. I literally did not know a single female relation who could tell me a positive birth story.
Twilight sleep was also connected to bottle feeding; my mother told me she was actually given a shot, without consultation, to stop her milk when she was in the hospital. And then taught how to make formula.
Where did you find that picture of me?
My mother and my father's mother (never very close with my maternal grandmother growing up) both had unmedicated hospital births for their two pregnancies. Both of them had the same outlook on labor/delivery "its hard work, its doable work, there's no reason for pain medication". In fact my grandmother used to complain about my need/want for pain relief as a child (I've been a chronic pain sufferer pretty much all my life) by saying "how are you going to get through childbirth? Are you going to let them give you drugs to mess up the baby?" I'd say "no, I'll deal, but I'm not pregnant NOW" (which was never satisfactory for her but my parents thankfully didn't feel the same way). I went through my first labor unmedicated (at home) despite being off all my drugs for my chronic pain in addition to the labor pain and I guess I'm the third generation to have the same outlook "its hard work, its doable work, there's no reason for pain medication", although my thoughts on birth go a lot deeper than that.
This article was interesting to me from another perspective. One of the topics I keep abreast on is population control/overpopulation myth. (check out pop.org if you are curious) . Nearly every 'developed' nation is below replacement level in fertility/birthrates, most after even counting the first generation immigrant who tend to have larger families. 'Racial suicide' which is better defined as 'cultural suicide' is currently happening in almost every developed nation. I don't really have anywhere to go with that point, the article just reminded me of it (and I've already sounded off on the topic in my own blog http://tigaseren.blogspot.com/2008/06/cultural-suicide.html ) and thought it was interesting.
Wow, this post and all the comments are fascinating. I liked that Kathy pointed out that the "racism" was toward other European groups. Your posts are always so thought-provoking!
My grandmother was also subject to twilight sleep. The birth of her first child resulted in a stillbirth - she has no idea what happened, and I've always been convinced it was the result of the sleep/ forceps. Twilight sleep was dangerous, not only a violation.
Gahhh, every time I read about twilight sleep it gives me chills. It's like something too horrible to imagine actually happening...but it DID happen. We may still have a long ways to go, but at least we have come far from THAT!
I am the 9th of 9 children, and my mom had mostly unmedicated births also (all of them at various military hospitals), though she does remember having "that trilene gas" once or twice.
But she swears she was NOT knocked out because she "wanted to be awake when her babies were born."
I've seen her as a hospital patient - she can be a real pain - so I'm sure she was back then, too.
The docs were probably just thinking, "Oh, God, give her what she wants and get her the hell out of here."
My mother-in-law was a Twilight Sleep patient in 1980! Yep! 1980. The doctor also manually extracted the placenta, before it had completely detached. She remembers this clearly.
I see that you've finally acknowledged what I pointed out years ago. Natural childbirth has its origins in the racist, sexist beliefs of Grantly Dick-Read. He made up the idea that "primitive" women have no pain in childbirth because he thought it would convince gullible white women to have more children.
He was right about one thing. Natural childbirth has remained confined to Western, white, relatively well off women and is rejected by most of the world. It's rather ironic that women who claimed to be feminists are still perpetuating racist and sexist lies about childbirth.
I find it interesting that you try to blame obstetricians, the people who opposed Grantly Dick-Read, for trying to control women's bodies. What is the philosophy of "natural" childbirth in its present incarnation but an attempt to tell women what kind of birth is "normal" and what interventions they should and should not have, and how much pain they should or should not feel?
Grantly Dick-Read's intellectual heirs are "natural" childbirth advocates, not obstetricians. How you can justify belief in a philosophy that was a racist and sexist lie?