Quiet please. Labour in progress
Ranting about how fucked up Scientology is is a little like teaching people to breathe - you just don’t need to do it (unless you’re Lindsay Lohan) But I’m going to because, well, it’s fucked up.
I have very few guiding principles in my life. Never cross the road when the green man is flashing is one and never go anywhere with men or ladies you don’t know is another. And above all, I never ever trust anything which derives it’s name from a mix of Latin and Greek roots (like, from the top of my head, “Television”). And one I learnt from my grandmother, never trust a smug looking git with red hair.
One of the teachings of Scientology is that there must be absolute quiet during childbirth. Including from the mother. No screaming, no swearing, no nothing. From the press pages of their website:
In the book, Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard writes that for the benefit of the mother and child, silence should be maintained during childbirth. This is because any words spoken are recorded in the reactive mind and can have an aberrative effect on the mother and the child.
Let’s have a quick look at exactly what he says shall we?
“Maintain silence in the presence of birth to save both the sanity of the mother and the child and safeguard the home to which they will go. And the maintaining of silence does not mean a volley of “Sh’s,” for those make stammerers.”
L. Ron Hubbard, “Dianetics”, Chapter X, “Preventive Dianetics”, page 193
This from a man whose own son (L. Ron Jr.) became highly critical of his father and his teachings in later life. The scientific background to this claim is highly dubious non existent and totally ignores the fact that hearing develops in unborn children at about 17-20 weeks and between 25 and 28 weeks they can hear their mothers heartbeat and it’s also reckoned that their acoustic perception helps them to begin language learning.
This basically means that for about 15 weeks prior to birth, a baby can hear sounds from outside the womb, albeit muffled by the amniotic fluid. (I haven’t checked but I’d have also thought it can probably feel those sounds because of the fluid too.) So it’s not like silence is it’s usual environment. In fact the screaming and shouting that is so stereotypical of labour pains is actually quite helpful for the mother as it’s an additional way of a) managing the pain* and b) helps ‘focus’ (for want of a better word) the pressure during a contraction in much the same way that a karate exponent exhales loudly when punching.
In fact, in my experience, the only person who would benefit from the mother shutting the hell up** during childbirth is the father (if he’s present). Seeing the woman he loves go through all that pain and hearing her scream and cry in agony is a harrowing experience that induces a feeling of helplessness unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before. Which probably explains why Hubbard included this as a tenet of his religion: he was too damn selfish and ignorant to accept that all that noise might actually be a good thing!
And obviously this is a view taken on by all of his selfish and ignorant male followers like Tom “Not as tall as I like to make out” Cruise. Tosser.
*In addition to TENS, Entonox, Pethidine and Epidurals of course. Not that scientologists are permitted to use anything like that either
** While my wife was in second stage, we realised we could hear the woman next door screaming quite loudly as the sound carried through the ventilation system. Quite calmly, she turned to the midwives and said “Could someone kindly please go and tell that women to SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”.
