This funny, not often used word means “people in the future” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
Posterity was one of the themes that arose from my research about why women choose to birth at home. It was evident at the time of my study that there was no scientific evidence about this topic in the literature concerning birth, so it had no space to exist in conversations, it was rarely considered as important. Yet it was a fundamental component of great importance to the women I interviewed concerning their births, and a key focus when making decisions.
So what did it actually mean?
The theme of posterity was focused around the stories we tell the next generation about birth. It matters what our children hear about the way they came into the world, and the day they were born. It’s important for them to hear about the love and joy that surrounded them when they came. It’s like a love story that they can carry with them through life with them as the main character. It also matters if they hear a birth story that is maybe not as rosy as the one I described first. I can only imagine how a child would internalise a birth story that involved pain and fear and possible trauma as the key message of when they came into the world, or perhaps they would never know the story of their birth if it was associated with those emotions.
I think it is important for children to know their birth story, and I think it matters what that story contains. Each child will know they are dearly loved from the moment they are born, and they will sometimes hear some snippets from the time of their pregnancy phase but few will know the mystery and magic about them coming from internal life to external life.
Maybe this piece of “missing history” has its origins in our societal reluctance to talk about anything to do with sex, or bodies, or medical procedures, or pain or fear. Birth happens tucked away these days in special secret rooms in hospitals with “specialists” who are the experts in the process of birth. This is a very clinical picture of birth that has stolen the very human elements of birth, like women being the experts about their own birth process and experience. This has led to a cultural shift, so that many women will initially say “you were delivered” rather than “I birthed you”. The parts of the birth story that tell about the love in the room, and the tenderness between couples in the hours of labour, and the amazing capacity of women to do the phenomenal act of birthing their baby is not given space in the sentence “you were delivered”.
The other thing about the story we tell to the next generation about birth is that it informs their own understanding of the experience of birth as a physical process and as a life event that they may undertake in the future.
In a world where nearly one in three women will have surgical intervention in their birth, what is the birth story we tell the next generation of women to give birth? Can we build a narrative that tells of the wonderful power and capacity of a woman’s body to bring her baby safely into the world? Can we write a chapter about the intricate blend of hormones, and physiology, and teamwork between mother and baby and those in that intimate circle of birth that creates the magical moments of euphoria and joy when a woman holds her baby having birthed in her own divine capacity? Will we tell the next generation about the very non-clinical but acutely intimate things of birth like beauty and sacredness so that they know about these things and birth?
The very dominant portrayal of birth in much of society is a picture of unbearable pain requiring management by experts, and that it’s all a bit of an emergency situation.
The stereotypical notion that a woman’s labour starts with strong contractions and sometimes her waters breaking, and then needing to rush into hospital where she is rescued from the perils of birth. The outcome is more and more often the story of birth involves a caesarean section, sometimes with no labour at all.
This dramatic portrayal in its simplicity is so far removed from the reality of the process of birth and is an incomplete story for the next generation to build their knowledge about birth from.
Do you know the story of your own birth, and what is the story you tell your children of their birth? What will be recorded for posterity I wonder.
