Christine Chau - Week 7

Today is Mother's Day! What a day to talk about this week's theme of giving life and life giving. The readings presented this week gave me a new perspective on postpartum experiences for women in different cultures. Here in America, lots of women are fighting for better maternal leave pay and benefits. It's quite unusual to me why the government and white men hate women so much. Why do people want to refrain on helping women who bring life into this world, especially those who believe in pro-life. For women of Isan, in the reading "Spiritual Healing Practices Among Rural Postpartum Thai Women" it highlights the specific rituals and practices women must follow in order to ensure a healthy life for their child and themselves in the future. It's something that I have not heard of before, yet it is really intriguing. The overall repeating theme within these practices was the element of fire. Heating the mother, the baby, drinking hot liquids, and hot baths were reoccurring over a period of a week. The heating and fire is meant to guard the mother and baby from bad spirits as well. As someone who lives in a country who does not really practice spirituality, it makes sense to me why people in other countries do it. A lot of other cultures are more in touch with the spiritual world throughout the generations and it's something they believe in, like how people believe in god here (I guess?). But anyway, I tried looking online for videos for any of these practices but I knew I probably would not be able to since I assume some of these practices are sacred/not a thing to record for women and their families. I wonder of what other cultures/countries have different rituals for postpartum women. Such as Mexican or any European cultures.



I chose this image because it represents the postpartum confinement of one month that often most women do. It's a bit of an older photo of Asian descent practice I assume