Waxman A G
Gallup Indian Medical Center, NM 87301.
Med Anthropol. 1990 Mar;12(2):187-206. doi: 10.1080/01459740.1990.9966021.
For the Navajo Indians, the transition from home-centered childbearing practices based on religious ritual to biomedically directed childbirth in hospitals was completed over a relatively short time in the middle decades of this century. For Anglo-American society, the acceptance of medically oriented childbirth occurred during an equally short period earlier in the century. The transition was driven for both by many common factors. For Navajo women it was additionally influenced by the social and economic changes that affected the Reservation following the beginning of the Second World War. This paper examines the changes in Navajo childbearing practices and, for comparison, those of the dominant American society. It reviews factors that permitted the acceptance of biomedical childbirth by Navajo women and explores the health implications of the transition.
对于纳瓦霍印第安人来说，从基于宗教仪式的以家庭为中心的生育方式向本世纪中叶相对较短时间内在医院进行的生物医学指导下的分娩的转变得以完成。对于英裔美国社会而言，对以医学为导向的分娩的接受在本世纪早些时候同样短的时期内发生。这两种转变都是由许多共同因素推动的。对于纳瓦霍女性来说，它还受到第二次世界大战开始后影响保留地的社会和经济变化的影响。本文研究了纳瓦霍人生育方式的变化，并作为比较，也研究了美国主流社会生育方式的变化。它回顾了使纳瓦霍女性接受生物医学分娩的因素，并探讨了这种转变对健康的影响。
