Well, I don't know about you, but I was disappointed when I watched 20/20's show on childbirth on Friday, January 2. First of all, it was called EXTREME MOTHERHOOD. Now I get that most women aren't having orgasmic births and home birth is also rare, but calling it "EXTREME"? And then sandwiching between these two segments a truly extreme story about women who buys dolls and mother them instead of real babies? Come on...
And that's not all. Could the correspondents who did the childbirth pieces on Orgasmic Birth and Home birth be any more judgmental in their tone of voices? I was appalled at how biased these correspondents were. Yes, filmmaker Debra Pascali-Bonaro and Ricki Lake made some fabulous points, but when right after they make those points the 20/20 correspondent puts down their points I felt like I was watching a tabloid entertainment show.
And finally (yes, the hair on my back really rose with this next point!) the home birth piece was completely, utterly misleading. They interspersed Laura Shanley, a well-respected pioneer in the unassisted birth community, with Ricki Lake who was not talking about unassisted birth at all. I nearly fell off my couch when Elizabeth Vargas talked about women who decide to have their babies at home with no medical care provider present and then proceeded to talk about home birth without making the CRUCIAL distinction that home births are attended by medical care providers while unassisted home births are not. I might have thought I was crazy and misheard something if it wasn't for my mother calling me at the end of the segment and she too felt it was totally misleading and made home birth sound even more extreme than it is.
I hope someone out there who didn't know about childbirth walked away thinking they might want a home birth or an orgasmic birth, but quite honestly 20/20's take would have had me running from these experiences...and my mother most definitely wouldn't be in my court.
What a way to start off the new year.
4 comments:
We got rid of TV in our house so I did not have the 'fortune' of watching 20/20, but did hear about it from other blogs, watch clips on the 20/20 site, and read what blog readers commented.
I am so sorry the eyes, minds and hearts of the childbirth community got poisoned by this trash. But it is a blow we need to recover from, possibly ignore, and try to find another media outlet for positive childbirth information. Facebook? MySpace? Twitter?
If they think we are 'extreme' perhaps a 'birth-in' at Wash DC?
That would definitely get some sort of attention! LOL!
Yes! A Birth-in!
I had about the same take - here's my review:
http://doulamomma.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-review2020.html
Hi Karen,
It's Sandy I found your blog- so glad you are commenting on this. Awhile back, I did an interview with ABC World News Tonight that was supposed to be about the perils of c-sections and the two teachers who died in NJ. It ended up with me "feeling" my c-section was not needed versus four doctors saying how safe c-sections are, and them showing a woman who scheduled a c-section cause her baby was too big. ABC clearly does not get it! Its the same obey rhetoric they always dish out and the fact they lumped homebirth in with those fake baby nutjobs just shows what they think. argh...
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