Author Book Announcement: Lamaze: An International History

I am pleased to announce the publication of: Michaels, Paula A. Lamaze: An International History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 264 pages. ISBN 9780199738649.

Description
The Lamaze method is virtually synonymous with natural childbirth in
America. In the 1970s, taking Lamaze classes was a common rite of passage
to parenthood. The conscious relaxation and patterned breathing techniques
touted as a natural and empowering path to the alleviation of pain in
childbirth resonated with the feminist and countercultural values of the
era.

In Lamaze, historian Paula A. Michaels tells the surprising story of the
Lamaze method from its origins in the Soviet Union in the 1940s, to its
popularization in France in the 1950s, an d then to its heyday in the 1960s
and 1970s in the US. Michaels shows how, for different reasons, in
disparate national contexts, this technique for managing the pain of
childbirth without resort to drugs found a following. The Soviet government
embraced this method as a panacea to childbirth pain in the face of the
material shortages that followed World War II. Heated and sometimes
ideologically inflected debates surrounded the Lamaze method as it moved
from East to West amid the Cold War. Physicians in France sympathetic to
the communist cause helped to export it across the Iron Curtain, but
politics alone fails to explain why French women embraced this approach.
Arriving on American shores around 1960, the Lamaze method took on new
meanings. Initially it offered a path to a safer and more satisfying birth
experience, but overtly political considerations came to the fore once
again as feminists appropriated it as a w ay to resist the patriarchal
authority of male obstetricians. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence,
Michaels pieces together this complex and fascinating story at the
crossroads of the history of politics, medicine, and women.

The story of Lamaze illuminates the many contentious issues that swirl
around birthing practices in America and Europe. Brimming with insight,
Michaels' engaging history offers an instructive intervention in the debate
about how to achieve humane, empowering, and safe maternity care for all
women.

Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Medicalized Childbirth and Natural Childbirth; 3. The
Soviet Method, 1936-51; 4. "Science Knows No Borders": Psychoprophylaxis in
France, 1951-56; 5. "Passionate Controversies": Conflict and Change in
Psychoprophylaxis across Europe in the 1950s; 6. Lamaze Goes Global,
1957-67; 7. American Gains and Global Decline, 1968-80; 8. Epilogue:
Revolution or Cooptation?

Paula.michaels@monash.edu