A University of Toronto researcher has found that a majority of women - regardless of religious denomination -- felt giving birth at home allowed them to infuse the experience with greater spiritual meaning.
Religious studies professor Pamela Klassen studied 45 American women of various ethnic origins and religious denominations. She said these women felt it easier to experience childbirth from a religious and cultural viewpoint when giving birth in their homes.
"I was surprised at these results," says Klassen, "because you would stereotypically assume that these mothers would be ideologically opposed to each other ranging as they were from feminists to Orthodox Jews to conservative Pentecostal women. Yet they ended up having similar understandings of the significance a home birth could have on their religious beliefs, their family relationships and their identity as women."
Klassen adds that the majority of these women felt birth necessitated having families and other loved ones nearby and even those women who eventually had to be transported to hospital because of medical complications wanted to try home birth again because of what it meant to them spiritually and emotionally.
Klassen's research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the department and Centre for the Study of Religion at U of T and the Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion, will be published in the near future in book form.
CONTACT:
Professor Pamela Klassen, department and Centre for the Study of Religion, 416-585-4573
Michah Rynor, U of T public affairs, 416-978-2104,
e-mail: michah.rynor@utoronto.c