Fathers and childbirth

V Welcome and bonding

The painting shows Saint John the Baptist as a newborn being cared for by four women, as seen in the center of the canvas. On the left, there is a second group of figures: Elisabeth, the mother, lying down after childbirth being cared for by another woman and her husband, Zachariah.  Zachariah is an old man and is portrayed here as writing because he was left speechless after he questioned the word of the angel Gabriel when he told him of John the Baptist’s birth.

Usually in the paintings and engravings from this time which represent the birth of a child, the father does not feature at all or occupies a secondary place in the scene. The image of a distant husband during pregnancy and an absent father during childbirth has been maintained by historians. However, treatises and literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries insisted that the husband should «gift and serve» his wife during her pregnancy. He was expected to make his wife the center of attention, free her from work, and from the anxiety of childbirth.  Although the protagonists were the midwives and their assistants and, in serious cases, doctors and surgeons, the father had other functions.  He was supposed to notify the midwife, prepare the room with everything necessary for his wife to be well attended, pray to ask that everything went well, and in rarer cases, attend the childbirth and even administer the emergency baptism. [Jesús María Usunáriz Garayoa]