7434 Indigenous Health: Contemporary Issues | Essay Writing Assignment Help

Indigenous Health: Contemporary Issues | Essay Assignment Help

My mother was born during the 2 nd world war and grew up in rural Germany. She orphaned at age 5 and was brought up by her grandparents. To  talk about her life could easily fill a book. Since I am training as a midwife I thought it would be interesting to ask her about the role and perception of women in society and also the oral contraceptive pill which became available 1961 when my mother was 21 years old.

The role of a woman, when my mother was young, was perceived to be wife, mother and housekeeper. When my mother had finished her 8 year education at the village school her grandparents found her an apprenticeship as a seamstress in the nearby town. My mother had no say in that process, her grandparents did not consult her once about her opinion or if there was any occupation in particular that she would like to pursue. Their point of view was that you had to be grateful to have an apprenticeship at all and that, as a woman, my mother would only be in the workforce until she got married and for the few years until then it didn’t matter what sort of work she did. While my mother did not enjoy working as a seamstress, she found that she had a knack for costume designing and branched out into this area after attending a seamstress master class, but alas only for some years until indeed she got married. Steinbacher (2009) shows that married women needed their husband’s permission when they wanted employed work and had to promise not to neglect their home duties. The husband was free to terminate their employment at any time (Steinbacher, 2009). It also was not necessarily easy for a woman to find paid work, often women would only be considered after all male applicants had been provided with jobs even if the women were better qualified (Steinbacher, 2009). In the early 1960s the average monthly income for a man was 550 marks while a woman received 280 marks for exactly the same work (Steinbacher, 2009 p.1).

My mother remembers that morals were very strict when she was young. That was especially the case in the countryside where she was growing up and where people knew everything about everybody else. It was only possible to live with a man when you were married. Staying overnight or even spending time with a man alone (away from the public eye) before you were married was unthinkable and even punishable. As mentioned in Steinbacher (2009) there was an ‘anti-matchmaking law’ that stated that providing accommodation to unmarried couples was punishable with prison sentences of up to 5 years.

My mother thinks that the situation relaxed a little when the oral contraceptive pill came onto the market. While nowadays the oral contraceptive pill is readily available to women over the age of 18 and to younger women who are deemed mature enough by their doctors or have gained parental consent (http://amavic.com.au/page/Teach_the_Teacher/FAQs/Contraception/#4), when the pill first hit the market it was not quite so easy to get a prescription. Of course it was sensible to be careful considering the lack of studies on long term outcomes but again morals seemed to be more prohibitive than medical caution. Kirchhoff, renowned head of a women’s hospital, concedes that he would only prescribe the pill to married women because the lifestyle of unmarried (young) women was too unpredictable and they could not be relied upon to remember to take the drug every day at the same time (‘Anti-Baby-Pillen’, 1964). Even if the woman was married she should fit in one of three categories: 1) she wanted to take control over the spacing of her children, 2) she already had many children and was physically too worn out to add further to her family or 3) pregnancy was medically contra-indicated as, for example, in severe heart disease (‘Anti-Baby-Pillen’, 1964). It might seem peculiar to want to restrict oral contraception to certain women given that is was estimated that before the pill became widely available there was one illegal termination for every  child born, with some estimates being as high as three illegal terminations per life child in Germany (‘Anti-Baby- Pillen’, 1964, p.87). When my mother was young single mothers were stigmatized by society and had no access to any form of child support neither through the child’s father nor through the government which put these women in a desperate situation (Steinbacher, 2009). Back in the 60s the church had a much stronger stand in society than it has nowadays and while the Lutherans (the 2 nd biggest church in Germany) were quite accommodating in regards to contraception there was a huge outcry by the Catholic Church (the biggest church in Germany) that any form of contraception, especially a hormonal drug, was an abomination against nature and the Will of God and had to be forbidden (‘Gesellschaft’, 1964). Intercourse without intending to conceive a child was a sin (‘Gesellschaft’, 1964).

When I asked my mother if she was using the pill, she said yes but for the opposite reason. My mother had trouble to fall pregnant and was put on the pill for some time hoping that it might increase her fertility and help her to fall pregnant when she discontinued it. No such luck though- it took her several more years before she conceived me. Again this anecdote highlights the general perception of a woman in the 60s. My father had suffered from rheumatic heart disease as a young man and was a chain smoker- however no one would ever have thought to investigate if maybe it was to do with him that my parents had trouble conceiving. While I am truly relieved that the times have changed, that as an adult woman I can determine my own life and there are many choices available for me in regards to occupation and career, that there is (more) equality between genders, knowing that I could manage as a single mother, if I had to and that there is easy access to contraception, I do not think that people in general are happier than they used to be. I think everybody gets used to and tries to make the most out of the circumstances they are living in. And there are advantages and disadvantages to all of them, for example there would have been security in knowing what was expected of you when living in the 60s, while in our time trying to work out who you are and what you want to do can be exciting but also scary and agonizing.