Natural Childbirth Movement in Hungary
As the behavior science, preventive approach and health-oriented worldview gradually permeate the whole of medicine, transformations in obstetrics are occurring slowly all around the world. The technocratic character of the medical approach to obstetrics strives to keep the intrinsically natural process under total control of medicine, which has provoked the emergence of the critical movement known as the natural birth movement. However, this generic term is only used theoretically in Hungary because the movement is yet to develop a single base that would bring together its separate units. One of the most important units of the natural birth movement is the doulas community which, after twenty years of differentiation, is seeking possibilities for cooperation, joint action and representation of natural childbirth. In this article, I would like to discuss this process, which reachesbeyond its own frameworks – since it affects not merely the quality of obstetrics but also modern and post-modern definitions of health and disease, the system of power, gender roles, distribution of knowledge, the relationship between nature and technology, as well as the long-term problem of the quality of life within the society – significant questions not only for Hungary.