© 2019 Anna OZHIGANOVA
2019 — №1 (17)
Citation link:
Ozhiganova, А. (2019). History of the Russian movement for home birth and attachment parenting (1980s – nowadays). Medical anthropology and bioethics, 17(1).
Keywords: spiritual midwifery, attachment parenting, home birth, water childbirth, Healthy Family Parental Club, I. Charkovsky.
Abstract: The publication presents the materials of the round table that took place on April 3, 2019, at the Center of Medical Anthropology of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences. The event was dedicated to the history of the parental movement for a healthy lifestyle and alternative methods for child upbringing, which arose back in the late Soviet period and reached its peak popularity during the Perestroika years. The round table was attended by perinatal specialists – midwives, childbirth preparation coaches, infant swimming coaches and perinatal psychologists. The experts stood at the origins of this movement and largely determined it. They spoke about when and why they joined the parenting movement; what meaning they attribute to the notion of spiritual midwifery; how they evaluate the practice of cold hardening and infants training developed by one of the movement’s leaders, Igor Charkovsky. The discussion revealed that the movement from its very start was very heterogeneous and consisted of various groups and currents.
Author info:
Anna Aleksandrovna Ozhiganova is Cand. Sc. and Research Fellow at the Center of Medical Anthropology of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).
E–mail: anna-ozhiganova@yandex.ru
Summary
The publication presents the materials of the round table that took place on April 3, 2019, at the Center for Medical Anthropology of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The event was dedicated to the history of the parental movement for a healthy lifestyle and alternative methods for child upbringing, which arose in the late Soviet period and reached the peak in its popularity during the Perestroika years. The movement never had a distinguishing name or organizational structure, and was, rather, an informal community of enthusiastic parents. Based on peer help and coaching, the movement participants prepared women for home water birth, exercised cold hardening and infant training, using such practices as swimming, diving and dynamic gymnastics.
The informal leaders of the movement were Igor Charkovsky (the author of the home water birth concept), Alexandra Gurevich (the head of the “Healthy Family” club) and Boris Nikitin (the head of the large Nikitins family, widely known in the Soviet Union thanks to their innovative methods of child training).
The round table was attended by perinatal specialists – midwives, perinatal psychologists, instructors in childbirth preparation, and infant swimming coaches. The attending experts stood at the origins of this movement and largely determined it: Marina Blank and Svetlana Anikina of “Vozrozhdenie” (“Renaissance”) family center, Marina Lyubimova of “Medunitsa” center, Natalia Kotlar of “Our Stork” center, Evgenia Igoshina of “Rozhayka” center, the author of the book “Home Birth – Healthy Child” (2005) Mikhail Fomin, Yulia Postnova of “Dragotsennost” (“Jewel”) center, as well as Alexandra Korolyova of “Dolphin” club.
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