Hacker Cinema
The Business of Being Born
2008 · Film · documentary · 87 min
Directed by Abby Epstein
Birth: it's a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to explore the maternity care system in America
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5 comments on Hacker News
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/twilight-sleep-the-forgotten-20th-century-method-of-childbirth-that-erased-memories/amp.html : there are a few snippets from the movie Business of being born and also other photographs from the era on the web if you rabbithole long enough.
> pregnancy and delivery is quite a medical thing.
This was historically not the case. There is a movie "The Business of Being Born" which emphasizes midwives in childbirth. It's important to know about this idea before conceiving, because you cannot change your OB after a certain number of weeks, at which point you are on the hospitalization conveyor belt.
Caveat emptor, I am a man, and my wife preferred hospitalization, and if you have medical problems it makes sense to be in a hospital. But if you are healthy and young, you have options. Given the pandemic, it could possibly be safer, on balance, to deliver at home or in a non-hospital facility. A migration to this less expensive model would also save money for new families and beds for the critically ill, such as in this pandemic.
> Having lived in San Francisco for years with children, I would very much like to get a three bedroom two bathroom home, but the cheapest places that are reasonably safe are in the $1.3 million range and up.
I think a lot of people in the upper middle class that read Hacker News are focused on maintaining their status and driving education (and land value increases) from school districts. I myself have made this choice and live in a very high cost suburb with a great school district. But that does not mean these amenities are necessary to have more children. I grew up in a blue collar village and while I graduated college and have some post-graduate coursework, most of my skills have been self-taught. I have often found, albeit anecdotally, that children placed into these districts and affluent situations tend to be less self-reliant and creative than the intelligent peers I grew up with from similar backgrounds. A lot of the worry about educational outcomes is driven by values imparted by strong parenting - my parents did not have much when I was young, but they imparted work ethic and emphasized enrichment outside of the organized classroom. Sometimes I regret moving to my affluent neighborhood because my children will learn less resilience due to less adversity. But I am not moving, so I don't really regret it.
My point is that there can be successful Americans from all walks of life and all levels of income due to the meritocratic nature of our nation and strong values in the home and surrounding community. Needing an expensive location with great schools can be helpful but overall is unnecessary. I have friends in a smaller city, one a developer and one a teacher, who own a $190k 4BR house and have safety and good schools. Their child is smart because they spend time and impart values. It is different because tradeoffs are made in potential income and budget decisions. But it is not necessarily harder.
I'm sorry for your friend, this is a terrible situation to be in.
And it's exactly why many people think pregnancies and births are over medicalized, especially in the US.
Women have given birth for a long time without medical intervention, using competent mid-wives, and now were at a point where every pregnant woman wants an epidural, a scheduled C-section (!!), inducing labor via medicine, etc. It's pretty insane..
The movie "Business of being born" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995061/) goes into detail of how the mindset of handling pregnancies shifted over the last decade, and how pregnancies are almost a "disease" to be treated.
Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted for this, I simply wanted to correlate that more interventions = more risk. No other intent, and definitely not trying to "victim blame" given I have no knowledge of the specific situation above.
This isn't true. Midwifery is a serious discipline and you must be licensed in the US. Also, they even have Doctors of Nurse Practice (DNP) of Midwifery at the respected Baylor [1] and other schools. I would recommend watching "The Business of Being Born" (it is on Netflix) - it is very enlightening about the safety and discipline of midwifery, and why hospital births are unnatural and in some ways incredibly unsafe.
[1] http://www.baylor.edu/nursing/nursing_grad/index.php?id=56683
Actually there are some compelling arguments for home birth aided by a midwife. There is a documentary about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_of_Being_Born
I think it's interesting that we've mitigated naturally occurring risks (such as disease) to such an extent that technology itself now poses risks of often similar magnitudes. Take preservatives: on the one hand keeping food fresh prevents various ills, but on the other hand continually ingesting chemical preservatives can cause disease itself such as cancer. The pushback against vaccines is kind of a manifestation of this... or perhaps the perception of risk as I think the science doesn't bear out the fears in this particular case. But in general, the idea that technology is always better seems to be increasingly challenged; often with a legitimate scientific basis.