My wife and I recently attended our first birthing class, and as it happened, the week’s lesson was on “the role of the partner.” Naturally, I expected the worst—and learned better. I was wildly impressed with the midwife’s presentation, and because I believe in highlighting real progress as much as I love complaining about misandry. Hopefully, sharing some of the lesson can inspire other expecting fathers or encourage others to treat them with more equality and inclusivity.
How Men Have Been Treated in the Birthing Process
According to the class, the public health system in Spain, where I live, did not allow men into the delivery room while their wives gave birth until 1995. In the US, it varied by private hospital, but most let fathers in by the 80s. Before this, men had to sit in the waiting room without any way to know how things were going, hearing their wife’s pain and feeling totally impotent and excluded.
I fully expected the midwife to portray this situation as somehow discrimination against women, but instead she fully recognized it as undervaluing the father and masculinity. She emphasized that the birthing community has long valued empathy, respect, care and support as the traits of those who accompany women giving brith. And those traits are not exclusively feminine.
Empowering Men in the Birthing Process
It’s important to recognize that the exclusion of men in the birthing process is indeed discrimination against men. Men have long felt marginalized as they aren’t included in something that not only affects their partner and child, but themselves. The midwife emphasized that including men is empowering men. Not only that, she qualified it as valuing masculinity and its unique and important functions in the family, something we should do from the moment of birth. The moment the baby is born, the father is created. It does him a disservice and disempowers him when he cannot be there for this creation.
Why Should Men Be Included in the Delivery
Men should be included during the delivery for a number of reasons. It’s been shown that when the woman is accompanied by someone she chooses, usually the father, deliveries go smoother and have better outcomes. Additionally, though they prefer their mother’s voices, babies do immediately recognize their father’s voice, so his presence in the delivery room is comforting to the child and begins the bonding process.
However, the reason that’s often overlooked is that it’s good for the father. On top of being able to form an immediate bond with his baby, the father feels empowered and valued as the family’s male presence and will feel this empowerment as he serves his role in the family going forward.
Challenges Men Still Face in the Birthing Process
The midwife ended the class by asking all the men how they had felt in the birthing process. Most expressed that despite considerable progress, they still felt marginalized and undervalued as fathers, as if they weren’t as important as the mothers. Personally, while I’ve been mostly satisfied with our hospital, including the midwives and our gynecologist, a few doctors seem to give me little attention or attempt to include me in our appointments. Hopefully if attitudes such as the one highlighted here become more common, this will change.
Fathers, the birth is also yours!
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In 2005 for my first child, the woman’s hospital staff would only look at and address questions my wife asked. If I asked a question, they would ask her if it was acceptable to answer before answering my question. Addition, when wife was 3 weeks away from giving birth, her doctor had to talk to her in rprivate when I went with her for the pre birth checkup. She, the doctor, asked multiple questions about if my wife was abused because I, her concerned husband was there.
The presumed guilty husband by default was and is a disgrace discrimination against men.
The level of applying guilt to men before any action is discriminatory and no amount of justification makes it less discriminatory.
This has broken the social contract and women need to step up and realize that 99.99% of men are not evil.
So, my boys know this as teenagers and nearly all of them in higher school don’t date or talk to girls given how warped mental girls are now.
Sad. My boys want a decent datable girlfriend but most of them have off balanced warped ideas of fearing to be 110% save yet expecting the he will pursue me even after rejecting him toxicity