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The Lamaze method is almost synonymous with natural childbirth in America. In the 1970s, taking Lamaze classes was a common rite of passage to parenthood. The mindful relaxation and patterned inhaling and exhaling techniques touted as a natural and empowering path to the alleviation of pain in childbirth resonated with the feminist and countercultural prices of the era.In Lamaze, historian Paula A. Michaels tells the surprising account of the Lamaze method from its origins in the Soviet Union in the 1940s, to its popularization in France in the 1950s, and then to its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s in america. Michaels shows how, for different reasons, in disparate national contexts, this system for controlling the pain of childbirth without resort to drugs found a pursuing. The Soviet federal government embraced this technique as a panacea to childbirth pain when confronted with the materials shortages that implemented World Warfare II. Heated and sometimes ideologically inflected debates ornamented the Lamaze method as it relocated from East to Western amid the Cold War. Doctors in France sympathetic to the communist cause helped to export it across the Iron Curtain, but politics by itself fails to clarify why French women embraced this approach. Arriving on American shores around 1960, the Lamaze method had taken on new meanings. First it offered a path to a safer and more satisfying delivery experience, but overtly political considerations came to the fore once again as feminists appropriated it as a way to withstand the patriarchal authority of male obstetricians. Drawing on a wealth of archival research, Michaels pieces alongside one another this intricate and fascinating account at the crossroads of the annals of politics, medicine, and women.The storyplot of Lamaze illuminates the many contentious issues that swirl around birthing tactics in America and Europe. Brimming with insight, Michaels' engaging history offers an instructive intervention in the debate about how to accomplish humane, empowering, and safe maternity care for all women.
