Reading Critique: Death Without Weeping
The author, Nancy Scheper Hughes wrote the article, “Death Without Weeping” to describe what the women of the Northwest Brazilian shantytown go through when they lose an infant. In this town child/infant mortality is so common that the women do not give her children a name until after at least a year of being born. Roughly one million children under the age of five die within a year. The article states that the average woman will experience at least 10 births, 4 child deaths, and 2 stillborns. 70% of the child deaths occur in the first six months after birth, and 82% occur by the time the child turns one year old. Also, almost half of the children’s death are under the age of five. If a child surpasses an early death, the average life expectancy …show more content…
Brazil is a dominant Catholic church so birth control, conceptions, and abortions are discouraged. Religion plays a role in saying that, if a child dies, it's also discouraged to cry because it is said that a Saint has claimed the child and that the death of the child should be seen as a celebration because the child has receive “good fortune”. Hughes had the ability to be inside the ShantyTown to the point that she got the sense of what she called "selective neglect". After experiencing the loss of children, women would not allow themselves to become attached to and care for their new children, which resulted in the women having the mindset that the death of a child is nothing, because they are always able to have another child later. One woman, Nailza had a two-year old name Joana who unfortunately died, and Nailza had gotten attached to her in the short two years of the baby’s life. They would not do this neglect consciously, but in the end they acknowledged the trade off they had to make to get by with so much loss. According to the article, the women would have to walk miles away from their homes to work for pennies a day, and often are not
The author, Nancy Scheper Hughes wrote the article, “Death Without Weeping” to describe what the women of the Northwest Brazilian shantytown go through when they lose an infant. In this town child/infant mortality is so common that the women do not give her children a name until after at least a year of being born. Roughly one million children under the age of five die within a year. The article states that the average woman will experience at least 10 births, 4 child deaths, and 2 stillborns. 70% of the child deaths occur in the first six months after birth, and 82% occur by the time the child turns one year old. Also, almost half of the children’s death are under the age of five. If a child surpasses an early death, the average life expectancy …show more content…
Brazil is a dominant Catholic church so birth control, conceptions, and abortions are discouraged. Religion plays a role in saying that, if a child dies, it's also discouraged to cry because it is said that a Saint has claimed the child and that the death of the child should be seen as a celebration because the child has receive “good fortune”. Hughes had the ability to be inside the ShantyTown to the point that she got the sense of what she called "selective neglect". After experiencing the loss of children, women would not allow themselves to become attached to and care for their new children, which resulted in the women having the mindset that the death of a child is nothing, because they are always able to have another child later. One woman, Nailza had a two-year old name Joana who unfortunately died, and Nailza had gotten attached to her in the short two years of the baby’s life. They would not do this neglect consciously, but in the end they acknowledged the trade off they had to make to get by with so much loss. According to the article, the women would have to walk miles away from their homes to work for pennies a day, and often are not