Bodies and Emotions in the Alternative Childbirth Movement: Collective Implications on Maternal Love

The biomedical model of childbirth has been widely criticized for managing labor as a mechanism, with scarce attention to the woman and child's emotions and low consideration of their body knowledge (Katz Rothman, 1982; Illich, 1975; Martin, 1987). For many women “the happiest of the days” is associated to fear, sufferance, humiliation and discomfort, and a violent memory of birth is embodied in present and future generations of adults. Traumatic experiences of labour have consequences on the mother's self-esteem and cause feelings of disempowerment that in turn heavily affect the physical and emotional relationship with the newborn and the partner (Denker et al., 2019).

Alternative models of birth (e.g also known as natural or holistic), which since the COVID-19 pandemic have gained increasing popularity, counteract the dominance of the biomedical culture and practices by stressing the importance of the physiological processes and their connection to the emotions and spirituality of the subjects involved (primarily the woman and the child but also the father, midwives, doulas, and siblings). In these alternative spaces, childbirth is considered as an organic event from which maternal and paternal love flourish and as a turning point in the social reproduction of non-violent values (Odent, 2009, 2021).

This paper draws on in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted from 2021 to 2024 in Italy with midwives, doulas, childbirth experts and couples with home-birth experiences. These first-hand data will be the basis to discuss how in these alternative spaces maternal (and paternal) love is imagined and connected to the body process of childbirth: what are the emotions felt by the woman, her partner, and the child during this life event? To what extent do maternal love and body processes of childbirth acquire an individual and a social dimension in the politics of the alternative childbirth movement?