Reaction Essay to the Documentary: The Business of Being Born

For my Intro to Psychology class we had to watch a documentary created by Ricki Lake. It is a very interesting perspective on home birth and midwives. (If you want to watch the documentary it is on YouTube and Netflix, but be warned it has very mature content.) So I just thought I would share with you the reaction paper I wrote. Don't worry its not 10 pages long! Ha ha ha!

           Like all documentaries, The Business of Being Born represented a situation or standpoint.  This documentary argued for home birth and the use of midwives in contrast to in-hospital birth.  The documentary presented a very interesting and compelling argument, however that I feel as though was based largely on emotional appeal by showing actual births and a history on birth.  The prospective of at home birth does scare me a little bit and while watching the documentary I couldn’t help but play devil’s advocate and think about all that could go wrong and not having the luxury of being at a hospital.  Although, on the flip side the prospect they presented of the interventions “like a domino effect” was also slightly disturbing and I found myself thinking that if I gave birth in a hospital I would be saying “don’t bring that needle near me!”  The documentary absolutely achieved it’s goal and succeeded in getting an emotional response from me.

            The argument did have a lot of strong factual evidence to support the emotional side.  When they brought up the idea of planning your birth via cesarean, I personally found it appalling.  It was as though birth was being thought of as some sort of fashion statement or convenient thing to fit into your schedule.  I do agree with the documentary that birth should be this natural and beautiful thing that changes your life and being given drugs and other instances can take away from that experience and make some women feel “robbed” of that experience.  All over, having not yet gone through the experience of having a baby I can’t even imagine what these women go through or the work it is do decide how to bring your baby into this world.  The documentary is open about the fact that pregnancy and labor can be very difficult and painful and that there is a lot that can go wrong. 

            It was intriguing that the documentary showed the history of birth as well as how midwives work.  How difficult it can be to be a midwife in today’s society, working with the insurance companies and being in a world, and job market, run by hospitals is something I never would have thought about.  It reminds the audience that making a living today is very hard, especially when you don’t follow the typical cookie-cutter mold.

            After watching this documentary I certainly have a new prospective on births and the different ways to bring a child into the world.  I would like to do more research on this topic to see the pros and cons about home birth vs. hospital birth and I feel like this may be an option for when I have a child of my own.  Ricki Lake was definitely passionate about her subject and I feel over all the documentary was very powerful and meaningful to see a side that no one ever thinks about or have even heard about.  It was fascinating to get to see this because it definitely opened my eyes a bit more.