The language of childbirth

I went to a talk on the subject of the churching of women today at an authors' lunch club I often go to. The speaker was Margaret Houlbrooke, author of a book on the subject. She had evidence of the churching of women happening in the Church of England well into the 1950s.

 

Although the churching ceremony is usually described as a service of thanksgiving, certainly in the old days - and, indeed, well into the 20th century - there were still undertones to the practice of a woman giving birth being seen as unclean or impure (after all, she must have had sex).

 

Margaret referred to "women and their gossips". I knew that a gossip was originally a sponsor at a baptism, but now I also know, because I've looked up 'gossip' in the OED, that another old definition of gossips is "female friends, invited to be present at a birth'. Gossip is an Old English word and comes from 'God + sib', sib meaning 'related by blood' (cf sibling).

 

Giving birth is a very powerful experience, yet the language of childbirth is often disempowering. Think of 'confinement' (original meaning is 'imprisonment'). Confinement in the childbirth context was first used only in the 18th century. The Middle English equivalent was Our Lady's bands (or bends, or bonds - all words related to the word 'bound' - again there is a sense of 'imprisonment' within the word).

 

The word 'delivery' is commonly used with relation to childbirth (the original meaning of 'deliver' was 'release from imprisonment or confinement'). The OED's definition of 'deliver' in the birthing sense is very negative and old-fashioned: "To disburden (a woman) of the fœtus, to bring to childbirth; in pass., to give birth to a child or offspring. Rarely said of beasts". There is a much more positive verb - "to birth" - defined as "to give birth to, to give rise to" but this is not in common use, particularly among doctors, although some midwives use it.

Comments

[Jemmy Hope]

On the subject of women being deemed 'unclean' pre-churching, there were, in my boyhood some taboos around this.
Women who had given birth but not been churched were denied entry to some relatives' and neighbours' houses.
My wife, who was brought up in a fishing community where such matters weighed heavily, tells me that some households allowed a compromise. An unchurched mother could enter a house if she held a roof tile on the top of her head. In this way she was deemed to be under another roof.

[John]

Sue, Jemmy,

Have either of you ever seen any reference to that practice in the US? I cover the latter half of the 20th Century and never heard of it until now.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks for those anecdotes, Jemmy. Interestingly, the speaker yesterday mentioned about women not being allowed out of the house until they'd been churched. Apparently such women were thought to bring bad luck on anyone they came into contact with (which shows, I suppose, the pagan origins of the rite - I don't suppose the Church said that).

John, you might find the practice went on until recently, and may still go on, in the Eastern Church (Orthodoxy, eg). Or, if you know any elderly rural women, ask them if they remember any of their contemporaries undergoing the ceremony. Here's a piece from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington in which a priest talks of the practice and says it was "intact until recent times" http://blog.adw.org/2010/02/lost-liturgies-file-the-churching-of-women/

[John]

My maternal grandmother, a very devout Roman Catholic, was raised in turn of the century somewhat rural western Massachusetts. Especially after reading the article you linked above, I remain surprised that I'd not heard the term, but, thinking about it, the reason might lie in her Victorian (mother, too) approach to what one did or did not discuss with men and certainly younger boys.

Great post - thanks.

[Jemmy Hope]

Another thing that occurs to me, which may for all I know have been confined to my (Catholic)family.
Baptisms were women's business. No men attended the ceremony. The recipients of the sacrament only had godmothers, not godfathers.
There may be a simpler explanation for this; that males tended not to enter churches once they'd left school, except for their wedding and their funeral.
On the other hand it may have had something to do with the then prevalent attitude that childbirth and child rearing were exclusively the work of the female partner (helped and advised by 'gossips').
I know that in some (rural?)communities women were not permitted to attend funerals, even the funeral of a woman. So maybe there was some sort of division of labour at work.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks again. Yes, I think you're both right - it was very much a women's thing. Mothers and grandmothers would put pressure on the young women. Matriarchy can be frighteningly powerful!