The Natural and the Personal: reflections on birth films in schools[1]

The paper explores, in detailed case‐studies in four schools, the ways in which birth is represented in the classroom. It follows the reactions of pupils and teachers to the showing of a number of widely used films on birth in school. An analysis of the films, and classroom response to them, suggests that they are often dominated by excessively medical perspectives, take up a child centre view that tends to leave out parents, particularly mothers’, points of view, and portray women and their bodies in passive and often sexist fashion. The paper suggests that we review our aims and objectives in showing such films in the classroom, bearing in mind not only these issues, but also the needs pupils may have for privacy, and to express their feelings in a number of different ways.