Luna-Week 7, Activity Post

This semester, I learned a lot about women’s health and the different ways in which our lives are medicalized. Because of the growing professionalization of the medical profession, it has led to almost every single life event for humans to be medicalized. (Lecture 3.2) I enjoyed reading about this because I have my own children and it was interesting to see the ways in which society has medicalized pregnancy and the birthing process over the years. To the point where it is now a ‘risk’ to have a child anywhere outside of a hospital. This made me think about my own experience and how it probably would have been different had I been born in a previous generation. I also think it’s interesting how many cesarean sections are given now, in comparison to generations before. Since our society is becoming more medicalized and there are more specialists and types of doctors than ever before, there are a lot of new types of procedures and surgeries that are recommended for women.

I also thought the reading for Week 3 was very interesting. The Childbearing article on Inuit methods of raising children was one of my favorite readings because it was very interesting to read about the different ways in which people raise their children and why they do what they do. For instance, I thought it was really interesting that when a child is born in their culture, they believe that the soul is of a recently deceased relative that lives inside of the child. (Paukuutit, Pg. 16) In a way, I think many people in our society think about children in a similar way. For instance, we discuss genetics like they are possessed directly from the child’s parents or elders. When a child does something or has a specific ‘look’, we attribute it to their ‘genes’ which is directly related to one of their relatives (dead or alive). In a way, we can correlate a similarity between the Inuit’s belief that a child embodies the soul of a deceased relative while we attribute a child’s personality and looks to be given to them by a family member via ‘genes’. I also enjoyed other things from this article, but this is the one thing I found to be the most interesting.

Sources Cited:

Lecture 3.2

PDF: 3.1. Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. “The Inuit Way: A Guide to Inuit Culture”

One thought on “Luna-Week 7, Activity Post

  1. It’s nice to see that you got to see a different side of the medical industry and view how it has shaped your ideas about pregnancy and birthing practices. Is there anything that you didn’t like about the class that you would like to see change?

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