Sheila Kitzinger is a respected social anthropologist with tremendous expertise in pregnancy and childbirth. The psychosexual approach she developed is based on the methods developed by Lamaze and Dick-Read.
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Kitzinger felt that the mother is not simply present at the birth of her child, but an active participant in the birth experience, and that she should not be limited to rehearsed breathing exercises and relaxation techniques.
Most mothers who give birth in a hospital, according to Sheila Kitzinger, are treated like animals giving birth in a zoo. Rather than treat women in labor as patients, subject to the decisions of other people, mothers need to understand and get what they really want out of the experience.
As women learn how their bodies work and the way hospitals work, human relationships with the doctors and midwives can be developed so that the kind of birth the mother needs can be negotiated.
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Sheila Kitzinger felt that one of the challenges that faces the medical profession is the need to provide the mother with choices in which she truly had a stake; whether it's a managed birth, a natural birth or anywhere in between. All labors, like the pregnancies that preceded them and the women who experience them are different.
According to Kitzinger, hospitals need to customize their services to take not only the wishes of the mother into account, but understand how her culture and upbringing may influence her attitudes about her body, and how comfortable she feels about her organs, cleanliness and beauty. Only by creating an understanding relationship between the mother and all the people who are involved in the birth process can she relax completely during labor and delivery.
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