Going Into Labour: Childbirth In Capitalism

Childbirth is often assumed to be a natural process, and yet the choices we make, risks we face, and care available to us around birth are entirely bound up in the dynamics of the system we live in: capitalism. In fact, capitalist relations shape childbirth in ways that are largely unacknowledged, but with intensely inequitable and often traumatic effects.

Going into Labour fills a void in the literature around both childbirth and reproductive rights, presenting a Marxist analysis of the labour of childbirth. Through each chapter, former midwife Anna Fielder interrogates and unpacks some of the key features of contemporary childbirth, and ultimately situates birth as a key site of anti-capitalist struggle.

Fielder delves into the 'natural' birth movement; the increasing engagement of women of colour, working-class women, transgender and non-binary gendered people in the politics of birth; the pay and working conditions of caregivers such as midwives and nurses; and the sharp contrast between proliferating rates of caesarean section in the West, and a lack of access to the same (at times lifesaving) form of surgery elsewhere.