Were you told that storks deliver babies? Most of us heard some kind of fairy tale about how babies are born, generally because our parents thought we couldn’t handle the reality of conception and birth. Of course, they did this to provide an age-appropriate explanation for a subject they did not know how to discuss with a child. In agricultural societies children are more aware of animals giving birth and literally see how new life emerges from a farm animal; from calves to kittens, horses to humans, babies come into being pretty much in the same way.
The stories that arise to describe our rites of passage—especially birth—are legion. The stork is one version of how babies get here.
I am reminded of the story that Clarrisa Pinkola Estes tells of a witch who flies around on a broomstick “delivering” babies. She carries her precious cargo in a basket which she balances on her trusty broom. Once in a while she encounters turbulence and the basket tips over. Instead of being delivered to the right home, the baby falls out of the basket and down the chimney of the wrong house! If you have ever felt like you were born into the wrong family, this sweet witch simply dropped you into a family that was not meant to be yours.
All symbols have deeper meanings and help us explain the mysteries of life. Envision a storyteller gathering children around a fire, telling them of their origins in fanciful fables and myths that enchanted, thrilled and pleased the eager listeners. Storks are known to migrate to temperate climates, returning in the spring, a sign of newness, new life and new beginnings. Spring is the season of re-birth. It is easy to associate a stork returning in the spring with the resurgence of life on the Earth and new human life as well.
Storks and many long-legged birds are also associated with the water element, which represents our emotions. Women are considered more emotional (there is brain research that we will discuss another time to support this contention) and mothers, as women, are linked to water imagery. A stork wadding in a body of water is again related to a baby emerging from a watery womb, being swept up by a large winged bird, and brought from the heavens to the home of an expectant family.
As much as we can appreciate the stork and the charming tale, the myth subtly promotes the “delivery” of babies. We can keep our enthralling and entertaining stories and become conscious of the “real” story—mothers are the bringers of new life. Let’s let go of the language of delivery and honor mothers giving birth with our thoughts, words and actions. Giving birth—dar a luz—giving to the Light! Let our everyday language celebrate and empower mommies and their babies being born—not delivered!.
The language we use to talk about childbirth is important. However, we take what we say so for granted that it is easy to use the language of the prevailing paradigm without even being aware of it. Brigitte Jordan, author of Birth in Four Cultures, coined the term “authoritative knowledge.” Looking on the internet, that knowledge is “the knowledge that counts.” In Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge (1997), editors Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent address the power of this knowledge and how it dominates childbearing in our society. Rayna Rapp states emphatically in the Forward to this amazing book: “authoritative knowledge isn’t produced simply by access to complex technology, or an abstract will to hierarchy. It is a way of organizing power relations in a room that makes them seem literally unthinkable in any other way” (p. xii).
Let me give you an example. When I was interviewing women for my dissertation research, a young pregnant woman told me that she and her husband had stopped telling their friends and family about their plans to have the baby in a birth center because they were criticized for potentially putting their baby in danger. The “authoritative knowledge” among most people in this country is that giving birth anywhere other than a hospital is dangerous and irresponsible.
The First Word to Eliminate!
I would like to start a grass roots movement to change the paradigm of childbirth. I would like mothers—pregnant women giving birth—to be honored for the inherent wisdom they have in their own bodies and minds. One way to do that is to stop using the predominant language of childbirth and coin new terms or revive old ones that truly represent what we mean.
The first word to change is “DELIVERY”.
Here’s why. We deliver pizza, newspapers, and the mail. We totally dis-empower women when we suggest that doctors deliver babies or that babies have to be “delivered” in hospitals. Mothers innately know how to GIVE BIRTH.
I love the Spanish phrase “dar a luz” which means to give to the Light. In English we can use “birth” as a verb. Or we can consciously say “women give birth” with the awareness that they are giving the greatest gift humanity can receive—new life!