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Specialist Life – Sheila Kitzinger
European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology 101 (2002) 94–95
Specialist Life – Sheila Kitzinger Sheila Kitzinger MBE, M. Litt. is a social anthropologist of childbirth who has carried out research in cultures as diverse as Fiji, South Africa, the Caribbean, Russia, Japan, Scandinavian countries and among the Maori of New Zealand . She is the world’s best-known childbirth educator and lectures around the world. She has written 24 books about pregnancy, birth, breast feeding and motherhood, which have been published in 20 languages. After reading social anthropology at Oxford, She went on to do research on race relations in British Universities and teaching at Edinburgh University. She has five daughters, all born at home. Her latest book is Rediscovering Birth, Little Brown, 2000, on the anthropology of birth, and the next is Birth Your Way, about home birth and birth centres, Dorling Kindersley 2002. Who was your most influential teacher? My mother, a strong feminist and committed pacifist, who had been a midwife and worked to create one of the first birth control clinics in South West England. She had a strong commitment to social justice. I remember how she invited a whole dole queue to my sixth birthday party. What is your favourite book? At any time, the one I’m writing. What is your best hope for the future? That somehow we can create world peace. We are all terrorists now.
What would you change if you were dictator? Switch to democracy. Who is your favourite politician? Worldwide, Nelson Mandela. In UK politics at the moment, Tony Benn for his principled stand against the Afghan war (I must be an unreconstructed socialist). Who is your least favourite politician? It’s got to be George. W. Bush. Are you a feminist? Of course. I have been well educated in feminism by three of my five daughters, who are lesbian feminists. How do you relax? Paint in various media: wood, tiles, silk, furniture, especially images of birth. I made a silk waistcoat for my favourite obstetrician, resplendent with birth symbols and the opening rose of the vagina. He wears it to the opera. How would you like to die? Flat on my back on a table with my legs in the air, in front of a large audience, of midwives and obstetricians, demonstrating with vigour the dangers of making women lie down, hold their breath till their eyes bulge and strain as if shitting a coconut to push a baby out. I claim that treating the second stage of labour as a race to the finishing post does violence to a woman’s spontaneous physiological rhythms, reduces oxygen flow, may lead to fetal heart deceleration and could
0301-2115/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. PII: S 0 3 0 1 - 2 1 1 5 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 6 1 5 - 7
Specialist Life
result in cardiac arrhythmia and even a stroke. I think this would make my point. What job would you choose if you lived your life again? I’d want to do exactly the same. How do you put patients at ease? They are not patients. In anthropological fieldwork it’s a matter of listening, acute observation and genuine interest in what women tell me. I learn something from every single woman. I also run a Birth Crisis Network, which women can ring when they feel the need to talk about distressing birth experiences. I listen. I validate what they say. I reflect back what they say, and I listen again. Tell us about your personal life? My husband, Uwe, is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard, focussing on European politics and conflict management, and commutes between Oxford and Harvard. Right through our marriage we were usually working in different countries. We have five adult daughters. Tess lives with her husband and three children in a house up our drive and the children are in and out constantly. She is my website designer and manager—www.sheilakitzinger.com —and we are enjoying working together on a CD ROM for children, ‘‘Babies
95
and Birth’’. I am re-learning Greek with my 13-year-old grandson. Celia, the oldest daughter, is Professor of Sociology at York, doing research and teaching conversation analysis. The youngest, Jenny, is Reader in Sociology and Communications at Brunel University and is also an anthropologist. Polly is an advocate for mental health patients, working with Mind, and Nell gardens and works with clay and does sculpture. Our small manor house outside Oxford is Tudor and just right for family gettogethers and midwifery and Birth Crisis study days. My best writing time is very early in the morning in my large four-poster bed. Which charity do you support? I work with various birth and breast feeding organisations, for those that help asylum seekers and refugees, (we ran our own family relief organisation for refugees in exYugoslavia until Oxfam and the Red Cross took over relief), with mothers in prison, American doulas who support pregnant women and new mothers bereaved by the massacre of September 11th, and the Holloway Birth Companions, who give woman-to-woman help to pregnant women in prison. Holloway is the largest women’s prison in Europe.
Specialist Life – Sheila Kitzinger Sheila Kitzinger MBE, M. Litt. is a social anthropologist of childbirth who has carried out research in cultures as diverse as Fiji, South Africa, the Caribbean, Russia, Japan, Scandinavian countries and among the Maori of New Zealand . She is the world’s best-known childbirth educator and lectures around the world. She has written 24 books about pregnancy, birth, breast feeding and motherhood, which have been published in 20 languages. After reading social anthropology at Oxford, She went on to do research on race relations in British Universities and teaching at Edinburgh University. She has five daughters, all born at home. Her latest book is Rediscovering Birth, Little Brown, 2000, on the anthropology of birth, and the next is Birth Your Way, about home birth and birth centres, Dorling Kindersley 2002. Who was your most influential teacher? My mother, a strong feminist and committed pacifist, who had been a midwife and worked to create one of the first birth control clinics in South West England. She had a strong commitment to social justice. I remember how she invited a whole dole queue to my sixth birthday party. What is your favourite book? At any time, the one I’m writing. What is your best hope for the future? That somehow we can create world peace. We are all terrorists now.
What would you change if you were dictator? Switch to democracy. Who is your favourite politician? Worldwide, Nelson Mandela. In UK politics at the moment, Tony Benn for his principled stand against the Afghan war (I must be an unreconstructed socialist). Who is your least favourite politician? It’s got to be George. W. Bush. Are you a feminist? Of course. I have been well educated in feminism by three of my five daughters, who are lesbian feminists. How do you relax? Paint in various media: wood, tiles, silk, furniture, especially images of birth. I made a silk waistcoat for my favourite obstetrician, resplendent with birth symbols and the opening rose of the vagina. He wears it to the opera. How would you like to die? Flat on my back on a table with my legs in the air, in front of a large audience, of midwives and obstetricians, demonstrating with vigour the dangers of making women lie down, hold their breath till their eyes bulge and strain as if shitting a coconut to push a baby out. I claim that treating the second stage of labour as a race to the finishing post does violence to a woman’s spontaneous physiological rhythms, reduces oxygen flow, may lead to fetal heart deceleration and could
0301-2115/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. PII: S 0 3 0 1 - 2 1 1 5 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 6 1 5 - 7
Specialist Life
result in cardiac arrhythmia and even a stroke. I think this would make my point. What job would you choose if you lived your life again? I’d want to do exactly the same. How do you put patients at ease? They are not patients. In anthropological fieldwork it’s a matter of listening, acute observation and genuine interest in what women tell me. I learn something from every single woman. I also run a Birth Crisis Network, which women can ring when they feel the need to talk about distressing birth experiences. I listen. I validate what they say. I reflect back what they say, and I listen again. Tell us about your personal life? My husband, Uwe, is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard, focussing on European politics and conflict management, and commutes between Oxford and Harvard. Right through our marriage we were usually working in different countries. We have five adult daughters. Tess lives with her husband and three children in a house up our drive and the children are in and out constantly. She is my website designer and manager—www.sheilakitzinger.com —and we are enjoying working together on a CD ROM for children, ‘‘Babies
95
and Birth’’. I am re-learning Greek with my 13-year-old grandson. Celia, the oldest daughter, is Professor of Sociology at York, doing research and teaching conversation analysis. The youngest, Jenny, is Reader in Sociology and Communications at Brunel University and is also an anthropologist. Polly is an advocate for mental health patients, working with Mind, and Nell gardens and works with clay and does sculpture. Our small manor house outside Oxford is Tudor and just right for family gettogethers and midwifery and Birth Crisis study days. My best writing time is very early in the morning in my large four-poster bed. Which charity do you support? I work with various birth and breast feeding organisations, for those that help asylum seekers and refugees, (we ran our own family relief organisation for refugees in exYugoslavia until Oxfam and the Red Cross took over relief), with mothers in prison, American doulas who support pregnant women and new mothers bereaved by the massacre of September 11th, and the Holloway Birth Companions, who give woman-to-woman help to pregnant women in prison. Holloway is the largest women’s prison in Europe.