The Tantrum: Should dads go to birthing class?

(This is the Tantrum, in which the four Dadwagon editors debate an important, or sometimes pointless, issue in parenthood.)

Good ole Butterfly Mcqueen–certainly captured the whole deal about birth didn’t she (for those of you who don’t know the reference, McQueen is the actress best known for playing Prissy in Gone With The Wind, who uttered the famous line “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!”).

So putting aside the fact that I am referencing an actress named Butterfly who played a character named Prissy, I’d like to say a few words on this whole birthing thing. First, what the hell is it with birthing? Are we so busy as a society that we can’t taking the time and actually fucking say give birth? I did it–took about one-millionth of more of my time, and truly, I do feel better for it.

Back to birth. I mean, yes, as fathers, we do come through the experience largely unscathed, and certainly nothing we have to do during birth compares to mothers. In fact, one might say, well, wait for it, uh, yeah, that’s right–father’s don’t have any skin in the game! Hah! But hell, not having a right to an opinion has in no way stopped DadWagon from vociferously expressing an opinion before. Why would it now?

Before I do just that, let me state that while I may not think very much of my ex-wife,  she was a champion on that particular day of J.P.’s birth–strong, brave, moving, all that stuff. It’s no small matter to create life. I don’t imagine anything that I or my colleagues will be writing this week will contradict that notion. Women and birth–strong coffee.

I was thinking about birthing recently because a good friend of mine has, after many years of trying, finally succeeded in getting pregnant…with twins. I was talking to her husband the other night, and trying not laugh with malicious glee as he told me that they had signed up for a birthing class.

My main memory of this experience, after the giant volume of anti-doctor rhetoric, was the video they show of actual births. For some reason, they couldn’t just show you a normal, in-hospital birth. It was all hydobirthing, and incense-birthing, and you know, clips of Amazonian tribal ladies dropping out kids while they foraged for wild herbs and ritually scarred themselves.

Not inspiring. In fact, the ashen looks on the faces of my classmates was kinda priceless. Every bit of paranoia the instructor had tried to drum into us during the class (you’re evil if you don’t breast-feed until your child is thirty; midwifery is next to godliness; Leche League good–cafe con leche bad) went out the window, and all we could think was–the mother’s are fucked.

So, in that light, because I’m an asshole, I sent a link to this site chock full of birth videos to my two friends. It only hints at the joys of the birthing industry, which from my perspective is a big business all set up to scare the bejesus out of prospective parents.

There, then, is the crux of the Tantrum this week. How do we here at Dadwagon feel about an industry designed to freak you out? Personally, I feel like less information about what you’re going to go through at birth is probably best. But that’s not an entirely defensible idea. Perhaps by week’s end we’ll have a clearer sense.

Enjoy the horror, folks.