translated from Spanish: ‘Motherhood must be given time and respect’: Disobedient mom

Motherhood is an experience in which women also experience certain violence, including obstetric violence, the capitalization of childbirth and the self-censity of breastfeeding in public spaces.
However, from social movements such as feminism, women aspire to transform society by naming and eradicating such violence. This outrage led Esther Vivas to write Disobedient Mom.
According to the author, reporting obstetric violence is the first step in combating it and making it effective must be identified because the problem lies in the way society normalizes this type of aggression against women, which could be seen as one of the frontiers of gender-based violence, thinking that the treatment that women receive in some health centres is normal.

Read: Parir in COVID-19 times: midwives offer alternative to hospitals
“We’ve been told to give birth to you alone, not to be complained, to be insulted, to be treated condescendingly, to be told that you’re bidding wrong and you’re going to kill your child, to have an unnecessary C-section, or to be separated from your baby at birth, and these practices are constituting specific violence , but instead, we’ve normalized it,” he says.
Vivas explains that to eradicate this violence the challenge is to understand and make visible this reality that women go through before, during and after pregnancy. For this, they must be able to identify obstetric violence and thus, those who travel through this experience go from victims to survivors.

“Only recognizing obstetric violence will be the only way to eradicate it,” he says.
The disobedient mom book. A feminist look at motherhood (Godot Editions, 2021) portrays motherhood as a three-part structured essay: Disputed Motherhood, My Birth Is Mine, and is Milk. In each title Vivas points to the violence so far normalized, but at the same time makes a critique with “violet look”, that is, from a feminist point of view.
“Disobedient mother is a cry to rebel, on the one hand, against the mandate of motherhood, so I say that the right to abortion is essential to have the right to free and unensted motherhood. It is also a cry to rebel against the mandate of patriarchal motherhood,” he adds.
The sacrificed mother
According to the book, today we have to be the sacrificed mother of a lifetime and, while the woman is required to be a superwoman or superwoman, she always comes to everything. However, this turns out to be a very toxic motherhood of the image of the good mother imposed in society. The truth is, you can never become one. It’s impossible and undesirable.
Disobedient mom, is also the portrait of a mother who in various attempts to get pregnant tells much of her experience, without becoming an autobiography of pregnancy, Vivas talks about her difficulties in achieving a pregnancy.
Deciding on pregnancy and breastfeeding without being taxed or violent is part of women’s right to choose an informed and targeted motherhood, and not bound by the royals of society. Even deciding to give birth at home should be part of these options that give stability for both mother and baby through the accompaniment of a midwife, as midwives are known in Spain, in a low-risk pregnancy.
A new model of motherhood
While disobedient Mom is not a guide to being a mother, in the book Esther Vivas shows readers the reality of motherhood where failure is part of this task. In the words of the author, “motherhood, when it is the first time, involves putting your previous life upside down, changes your body, the relationship with your body, the relationship with your partner, with employment, with friends, with family and that, no one tells you.”
So, deciding to become a mother marks a before and after in women’s lives. For this reason, she proposes a model of motherhood with a feminist gaze to leave behind the patriarchal motherhood that for decades made women believe that they are born to be mothers.
Vivas emphasizes that women who choose to be mothers must be vindicated as political subjects because, “since you get pregnant we are infantilized, we are treated condescendingly and everyone, family, friends, neighbors say what is best for you or for the baby, when you are the mother to define it,” he says.
Within this model of motherhood that, from her experience, Esther Vivas proposes is to understand that motherhood is also a collective and not unique responsibility of the woman who decides to have hI’m going to go.
“It is a responsibility of the mother, of the father, if there is; and society at large, because we are talking about taking care of the emotional and physical health of the girls and boys that will be the adults of tomorrow and this, should involve us all,” she adds.
What is guilt in motherhood?
While motherhood is a path full of uncertainties as mentioned in the book, guilt is part of this long-time experience. This feeling becomes one of the great enemies to fight in motherhood because the mother will always be judged for what she does in caring for sons and daughters.
These trials generate a degree of guilt in mothers by thinking they are not doing well. However, “The problem is not us, the problem, on the one hand is the mirror of motherhood with which we look where we have to be a perfect mother who never gets it wrong and everything does well. That’s impossible,” he says.
The blame also comes when a woman who decides to be a mother fails to get pregnant after several attempts, as well as not having the vaginal delivery they wanted or a free lactation. Even the feeling of guilt can also occur in women who, today, continue to experience the social pressures of their environment when they reach a certain age and have no offspring.
Midwives and the historic theft of childbirth
Childbirth and partery are two elements that women have been robbed of, historically. In the book Vivas talks about the parter, who, historically, is the woman who accompanies the mother-to-be to give birth.
The midwife’s knowledge has been persecuted, in the Middle Ages many midwives were burned at the stake and called witches because their knowledge was a threat to the power of the state and the church. In modern societies “women were made to believe that we do not know how to give birth, she turned the midwives away from the accompaniment to childbirth to leave it in the hands of doctors, who attend birth under a sexist and patriarchal gaze.”
In Mexico, during the Partería Forum, joining forces in Mexico City, organized by the Ministry of Health through the National Center for Gender Equity (CNEGSR) and with the support of the representation of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Mexico, Dr Maureen Birmingham, PAHO/WHO representative in the country, said: “Midwives can help prevent two-thirds of total maternal deaths, but only 4 out of 73 countries have midwives capable of meeting the universal need for the 46 essential sexual, reproductive, maternal and neonatal health interventions. Women’s health and partery go hand in hand.”
Faced with this, Esther Vivas points out that it is important to recognize the knowledge of midwives, which is a valid traditional knowledge and is not only about recovering it, but also making it visible, valued and incorporated into childbirth health care. In addition, to stop belittling their knowledge and commodified the birth itself where their physiology is not respected and who should be given time and respect, not haste and violence.
“The obstetrician is the professional prepared to attend to complications that come from childbirth. The partera is formed to accompany a woman to give birth and therefore, we must return the value to this fundamental work for the good accompaniment of childbirth”, she stresses.
Esther Vivas’ disobedient mom is already in bookstores. The cover illustration belongs to Eréndira Derbez and the internal illustrations are by Julieta Longo.

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Original source in Spanish

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