Women and Births in Bom Jesus
According to Scheper-Hughes, the residents of the place Bom Jesus were living in very squalid condition. The men, women and children were used to living a very hard life. Those poor women in Bom Jesus believed that an ideal family should have two or three children and actually that is what they actually brought up but a striking concern is that they had a range of nine to twelve pregnancies (Scheper-Hughes, 332). The answer to the question, why so many pregnancies and yet the ideal size is just a few can only be given by the culture and the lifestyle that these people lived according to Scheper-Hughes.
There first question that lingers in many, is the issue of birth control methods that these women knew of but were not using to just give birth to just a few kids that they would bring up (From anth316_10). Responding to this, Scheper-Hughes says that she interviewed some women who said they had used the birth control pills and was effective but were also very dangerous. The pill, they said, would cause headaches, nausea, swelling, extreme nervousness and worst of all cancer (Scheper-Hughes, 334). Also a group hanged with the reasons that the church, Catholic Church that dominated the region, advised against the pill. Keeping the track of how one took the pill was another reason some women gave for not taking the birth control pills. The Diaphragms, as a birth control method, were not available locally in the drugstores (From anth316_12). The diaphragms were also awkward to uses the place did not privacy in addition to lack of water. The other option was using condoms but the men did not like using condoms because they deprived them the pleasure and also connected them to prostitutes; to protect themselves from venereal diseases but not as a means of preventing the prostitute from getting pregnant.
The last alternative birth control method to these women was tubal ligation or sterilization but this was a reserve for high class and middle class as the doctors would not ask them so many questions as they did to the impoverished people. So the only means was to abstain from sex which was not possible or continue to have a baby which you do not want. Scheper-Hughes quotes, “Well, I have more children than I need right now. I don't want to have more children, but if God agrees that I should, then I'll have to agree too,” (From anth316_12). This points out that that the women believed that birth control was something they could not be able to do, as all the alternatives were unsuitable from their responses, apart from the sterilization which was left for the rich only, and also counters the teachings of the Catholic church (From anth316_12). The last thing that contributed to such number of unwanted pregnancies among the Bom Jesus community was the notion that sex was for pleasure and it made them lively even though they had nothing to eat. The men and women of Bom Jesus had so many problems to deal with each day and the only relief they had was sex (Scheper-Hughes, 165). Scheper-Hughes points a case where one woman said that she may like the money she needs to buy food and water but sex was freely available (From anth316_11). The only price connected to it was the pregnancies and they were ready to pay the price. Therefore these women ended up having more pregnancies than they did not want as they had limited resources and no money for birth control measures like sterilization which they preferred and also not ready to give up some of their lifestyles.
The “Maternal Philosophy” of the women of Bom Jesus.
“A child died today in favela. He was two months. If he had lived, he would have gone hungry anyway.”That statement summed the “Maternal Philosophy in Bom Jesus (Scheper-Hughes, 459). The residents of Bom Jesus, men, women and children all had to deal with very hard situations to live. Their lifestyle was characterized by poor working conditions, lack of food and poor medical assistance. The “Death without Weeping”, philosophy was then adopted as Scheper-Hughes portrays since the death of an infant was something norm to the poor families (France, 74).
One of the main contributions of the infants’ deaths was lack of being breast fed. There was couple of reason that made women especially from poor background not to breastfeed their infants, though most of the reasons are not genuinely reasonable but the women believed them. One of them was the thinking that their bodies were so malnourished that breastfeeding the infants would actually kill them (Scheper-Hughes, 889). They also believed in another fallacy that the milk from their breasts was not suitable for the infants due to how malnourished they were. This is clearly pointed by the quote from the book, “Well, of course, rich people can breastfeed their babies, but if we did, the babies would kill us. That is, they would drain us of our strength.” This notion made the women resort to formula feeding at the expanse of breastfeeding (From anth316_12). Secondly, breastfeeding is seen as a mark of being primitive or as immigrants. Therefore these women do not want to be seen primitive, thus do not breast feed. The only women known to breastfeed their infants were the Indians. Since the Indians were below them in the social ladder, the women of Bon Jesus would not make a mistake of breastfeeding in case one mistakes them for the Indians who were lower than them in class (From IMPORTANT DOCUMENT PLEASE READ).
The “natural maternal instinct” argument
The publication of Nancy Scheper-Hughes book brought sparked a lot of resistance and outraged among readers, most of them feminist who argued that even the destitute women had “natural maternal instincts” (From anth316_10). Scheper- Hughes responds to these arguments, arguing that what we call natural instincts is not really natural (Scheper-Hughes, np). They are conditioned in our systems by the social settings that we find ourselves in. Since the mothers cannot be able to afford to bring up the infants; they develop a natural inclination to hide their conscience from guilt. Our mind falls in self deception and we are psychologically comforted by our actions (From anth316_12). She cites the example of a woman who strangled her two children and the whole community went in rage, yet they never felt guilty when they let their infants die, saying the infants choose not to live. The Brazilians mothers had lost the natural instinct of taking care of their own infants and developed the instinct to protect their feelings from being harmed since they could either not be able to support the infant of change their lifestyle of unprotected sex. In her own words she said, “The little critters don't feel anything anyway.” The lady argued that little children or infants do not actually feel anything (From anth316_12). It is like referring them to incomplete human beings.
The men of Alto main role in the family are providing food for the family. In this culture, a man has to support a woman she has had a child with, whether they are living together or not (From IMPORTANT DOCUMENT PLEASE READ). When the woman has an infant it is the role of the man to go out and buy the mixture for the baby. This also serves as a public statement of responsibility of the responsibility of the baby as well as claiming the mother. Even the mother and the father are not getting along well but the man is providing for the kind serves as a public statement and the woman is not seen as though she is immoral ((From IMPORTANT DOCUMENT PLEASE READ). This role serves right for her social image which is highly sought in this culture. However, the poor economic conditions among these poor Brazilians make the availability of money to buy the mixture impossible and the infants get malnourished as the mothers cannot breastfeed them.
In conclusion, the Nancy Scheper-Hughes book, “Death without Weeping”, brings out many things that happen around the world especially in third world countries. She also points out that not only in the third countries like Brazil and African countries where people are starving, but also in countries in Europe (From anth316_11). The poor economic conditions illiteracy leads to the society performing atrocities either in knowledge or out of ignorance like the people of Bom Jesus. Scheper-Hughes also argues that the elites in the society do not discuss starvation so as to deny it existence to avoid feeling of responsibility or hiding their guilt (From IMPORTANT DOCUMENT PLEASE READ). However the poor do not also discuss it since it is embarrassing and a condition that seems hopelessly inevitable and also a criticism to the government that allows it.
Works Cited
anth316_10_v(c092).pdf
anth316_11_v(c092).pdf
anth316_12_v(c092).pdf
IMPORTANT DOCUMENT PLEASE READ.doc
France, R. Soulodre-La. "'Por el Amor!'Child Killing in Colonial Nueva Granada." Slavery and Abolition 23.1 (2002): 87-100.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "Demography without Numbers." Anthropological demography: Toward a new synthesis (1997): 201-222.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Madness of Hunger: sickness, delirium, and human needs." Culture, medicine and psychiatry 12.4 (1988): 429-458.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death without weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil. University of California Press, 1993.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Cultural Politics of Child Survival." Child Survival. Springer Netherlands, 1987. 1-29.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "Small Wars and Invisible Genocides." Social Science & Medicine 43.5 (1996): 889-900.
