Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and ...
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Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act. Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth--and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them--to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations--including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain--she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women. What does home birth--a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control--mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation and motherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, Blessed Events challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is "lived" in contemporary America.
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Add this copy of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America to cart. $3.20, good condition, Sold by One Planet Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MO, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
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Add this copy of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America to cart. $3.21, good condition, Sold by The Maryland Book Bank rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from baltimore, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
Add this copy of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America to cart. $8.00, fair condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
Add this copy of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America to cart. $8.22, good condition, Sold by SurplusTextSeller rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MO, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
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Good. Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust jacket. Has used sticker(s) and some writing or highlighting. UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes).
Add this copy of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America to cart. $11.50, very good condition, Sold by The Haunted Bookshop rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Iowa City, IA, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
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Very Good. Clean except for a little dark spotting on the bottom edge of the book; no owners' marks; soft cover shows only moderate shelfwear at the corners, otherwise excellent. xv, 316pp. incl. index.
Add this copy of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America to cart. $36.19, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
Add this copy of Blessed Events to cart. $43.70, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Princeton University Press.
