Birth, Death And Motherhood In Classical Greece Summary

Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece Review Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece, by Nancy Demand, focuses on the lives of women in that time period. It illustrates how their lives revolved around the oikos and being a dutiful wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. The book also conveys the limited evidence of women in Classical Greek medicine. Through the ideas of Demand, which she based upon other scholars’, the lives of women, their treatments in medicine, the risks of childbirth, the appeals to Gods for help, the pressure for young women to have children, and the controlling factor of men over the women are analyzed. The lives of Greek women were not heavily recorded due to the fact that women mainly kept private to their oikos, and stayed out of the polis. The polis, or city …show more content…
These cases are from the viewpoint of the male doctors, even though they might not have been the one who partook in the treatment of the woman. In many cases, midwives who worked under a male doctor would take care of a pregnant woman and delivery the baby under the doctor’s supervision, or on her own and she would relay the facts to the doctor, for him to take the scenario and treatment as his own. Regardless of how the birth process was treated and if whether it was conducted by a male physician or a midwife, the lack of resources seen in modern medicine led to illness and death of the mother, infant, or both. Pregnancy and birth were both risk factors in Classical Greece. Due to women being malnourished, both the woman and child were in a vulnerable state during birth, which led to a higher fatality rate. The uncertainty of living after birth led many women, and families, to fear for the outcome. To relieve stress and stay hopeful, they used common practices that were believed to help the mother and child have a better end