Exit
COURTESY OF LAWRENCE SCHEER
the room also increased the risk of
infection, said Eisenberg.
It wasn’t until the mid-1960s
and early 1970s, with the advent
of second-wave feminism and Dr.
Robert Bradley’s seminal book
Husband-Coached Childbirth,
that dads started to get involved.
“In the 1930s, if your wife was in
labor, it was okay for you to be at
Yankee Stadium watching a game,”
said Eisenberg. “Now, there’s a
cultural expectation that husbands
will be in the delivery room.”
It might be an expectation, but
there’s still relatively little guidance for fathers and partners.
The tendency is to think that
men should suck it up, because
women do all the real work, said
Elissa Stein, author of Don’t Just
Stand There: How to Be Helpful,
Clued-In, Supportive, Engaged,
Has society gone
too far in expecting
all dads to be
active participants
— through labor,
pushing, crowning
— while giving them
little clear guidance
on why, exactly,
they’re there?
LIFESTYLE
Meaningful and Relevant in the
Delivery Room. But, Steinberg
said, this tendency is problematic.
“The woman is often in pain and
scared,” she said. “The partner’s
never been through it, either.”
While pregnant with her second baby, Stein put together a
pamphlet for her husband, Jon,
that eventually turned into her
book. Her first birth was difficult. As doctors struggled to find
the baby’s heartbeat, Jon stood to
the side, panicked. Eventually he
picked up the camera, hoping to
be useful in some way. When Stein
later saw the photos, she was horrified: “I was like, ‘OH MY GOD.
You did not take that picture!’ But
he did — a whole bunch of them,
really intimate stuff,” she said.
Dads aren’t dolts, Stein added, but
HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
Lawrence
Scheer said
witnessing
his wife’s
c-section was
terrifying,
but the
procedure was
successful.