CHAPTER NINE
Whakawhanaungatanga – Making Families
Suzanne Miller and Teresa Krishnan
The Sociocultural Politics of Birthspace Design
Birthspaces designed for ‘housing’ the psycho-physical expressiveness of the woman and child, and the emotive and affective expressiveness of the family require a radical shift, built on an understanding that physical spaces are not only our spatial environments but also places of the soul within us.1 Introduction As nascent human beings, our first exposure to a design aesthetic is the room that we emerge into when we are born. It is fair to say that our consciousness about this space may be limited at this time, but the evidence is clear that the room itself has already had a profound influence on the people who give birth to us, and those who are there in support of our birthing – whānau2 and health practitioners. Birthspace design is strongly shaped by the ideologies ‘hidden in plain sight’ of medical men, managers, architects and economists. In Aotearoa New Zealand, birthing whānau, health practitioners and Māori are rarely at the forefront of design decision-making. While ‘consultation’ inevitably takes place with these groups whose needs should be paramount, typically their pleas for recognition of the extensive literature on optimal birth-space design are subjugated to limited resources within the wider aesthetic needs of hospital systems. Unless birth is taking place at home, intimate spaces that enable birthing women and their families to express themselves fully are rare and are practically non-existent when the needs of Indigenous māmā3 and their whānau, hapū4 and iwi5 are considered. While increasingly embracing te reo Māori6 and indigenous imagery in an effort to be inclusive, a more nuanced look at how the birthspace is set up reveals an expectation that one support person will be present during birth with the provision of one chair, that birth-giving (tapu) and
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