There’s a heated discussion over at WaPo’s On Parenting blog. The topic: should dads be invited into the delivery room? One Gallic OB/GYN, Michel Odent, told the BBC he thinks not:
“Having been involved for more than 50 years in childbirths in homes and hospitals in France, England and Africa, the best environment I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody around the woman in labour apart from a silent, low-profile and experienced midwife,” he says.
OK, so I’m sympathetic to this argument because there are some things that can’t be unseen. But on the otherhand, the delivery of our second kid nearly killed my wife, and while that was a bit terrifying, it’s better I was there than not.
The article is worth a read, anyhow. There are other safety arguments in favor of having husbands there (apparently it can reduce c-sections). But what interests me is how completely the culture has shifted over a relatively short period of time. From the piece:
In the 1960s only about a quarter of men in the UK attended the birth of an infant, today it is well over 90%.
So maybe it’s just a French traditionalist launching a cri de coeur against the modern world. He wouldn’t be the first Frenchman to do so.
Attending the birth is clearly a requirement of today’s fathers. And yet, I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like for my grandfather, who if I remembered correctly, just went home after bringing his wife to the hospital. Did that make him a worse father in the long run? A worse husband?
I often have the same thoughts about discipline. The norms have shifted so much that yesterday’s model father would probably have his kids taken away from him. So few of us are allowed to raise a child using just a tumbler of Bourbon and a strong belt. And yet, did they really love their kids less back in the day? And the real monsters–the pedophiles, the torturers, the people who actually hate their children–are there fewer of them today? I doubt it.
I don’t want to join Odent in opposing progress just on the principle of it. But it can be so tiresome, this knowing better than any generation that ever lived. We can’t really be that smart, can we?