"It's one of the ways expectant parents here start to think of their unborn children as persons who are part of their family," said Sallie Han, a researcher with the Alfred P. Sloan Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). Communicating with the unborn is common among Americans but rare in other cultures, she said.
Unlike baby talk, forms of which are found in most cultures---often as a simple, high-pitched tone reserved for young children---belly talk usually sounds like regular speech. Sometimes it is spontaneous, but often it is initiated in response to fetal kicks or other movements ("You are busy today.")
Belly talk includes more than just speech, according to Han. It also includes reading and playing music to the unborn child, rubbing, poking or prodding the pregnant belly, and interpreting fetal kicks and other movements as communications from the expected baby. Many parents-to-be give their unborn children names, or at least refer to the baby as "he" or "she" instead of "it."
Expectant dads also seem to regard belly talk as a way to feel an emotional bond with the developing child, according to Han. Belly talk allows men to participate more actively in the pregnancy experience and helps bridge the distance that expectant fathers often feel from the unborn child, she said.
As part of her doctoral dissertation examining the beliefs, expectations and experiences of first-time mothers, Han has been conducting in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with 15 middle-class Midwestern pregnant women and many of their partners, interviewing them repeatedly to document their monthly progress.
In addition, she has conducted participant-observation and informal interviews with pregnant women and couples attending four different childbirth preparation courses, prenatal yoga and pregnancy massage classes, a hospital-sponsored birth fair, and other community events and settings.
She has talked with pregnant women while they are shopping and observed at more than 100 appointments with women receiving prenatal care, more than 50 ultrasound appointments, and at genetic counseling sessions. Her goal: to learn how pregnant women in the United States actively create an emerging sense of kinship with their unborn child, through everyday activities like eating, exercise, prenatal care, shopping and belly talk.
"These are practices that we take for granted as natural and ordinary. I hope my research can open our eyes to the fact that these practices, as well as the beliefs and values that they reflect, actually are remarkably complicated products, or constructions of our culture and society," Han said.
Besides bonding with the expected baby, Han found that belly talk sometimes has another function. In some ways, it serves as an extension of the peculiarly American emphasis on giving children the best possible start in life, beginning even before they are born.
"By reading to their unborn children and playing music for them, some parents feel they may be contributing to their child's eventual success in life," she said. "There's a lot of interest in what some child development researchers call 'prenatal education.' But most of the parents I interviewed were also very concerned about pushing their children too hard."
Han, who recently gave birth to her only child, engaged in belly talk herself while studying it in others. "As you're sitting there with a big belly, it's hard to believe that a baby is really inside. You know this is the case, you feel movement, and you see the baby's image on ultrasounds, but still, it seems implausible. Talking to the baby helps to make it real."
Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. Visit the ISR Web site at www.isr.umich.edu for more information. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest computerized social science data archive.
Related Links:
Institute for Social Research: www.isr.umich.edu
Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life: http://ceel.psc.isr.umich.edu/
Pregnancy Project: http://pregnancyproject.tripod.com/