First Days in the Life of a New Guinea Baby
Channel: Tom Church
Date: 15/11/2011

A clip from a film called 'The First Days in the Life of a New Guinea Baby' by Margeret Mead. It is an extraordinary, 20-minute film in which one virtually witnesses the first few minutes after the birth of a baby in the Papuan highlands. Mead wasn't actually present for the birth itself, but she got there within 20 minutes of the birth. It was shot in 1938 in an Iatmul village, where Gregory Bateson had done his first fieldwork. It was an extraordinary opportunity that she had been waiting for. The film camera was set up. She knew this woman was about to give birth. Within 20 minutes she was there with her camera, documenting what happened immediately after the birth. For Mead, Iatmul women became the ideal type of women, in terms of their childcare practices: the matter-of-fact way in which they took care of their babies and dealt with labor and childbirth. She contrasted the Iatmul ways to the highly medicalized routines in the U.S. at that time.