Is a birth beautiful possible?

When the patron saint of childbirth, Sheila Kitzinger was in Dublin recently to publicise her latest book, Rediscovering Birth, we got right into conversation, because like many mothers, I consider her an old friend. At times I've been angry with her because her books portray birth as such a potentially beautiful experience.

Yes, I would have liked to have been surrounded and supported by loving women midwives and friends who "stirred" every time I had a contraction and soothed me with caresses and aromatic oils. Yes, I would have liked to have been an American Indian woman, supported in the standing position through the second stage by the strongest, most handsome bachelor "buck" in the tribe.

Yes, I would have liked to have had a home birth with my own midwife talking me through gently as I spent labour in a giant, warm bath.

The reality was somewhat different. I have always felt that I am one mother, I cannot change the system, so it's better just to go along with the medical model and not take any chances. Women who write birthing plans and have too high expectations are always bound to be disappointed, but I really admire those women who dare to have their babies at home.

Kitzinger, now a grandmother with three generations living on her estate, maintains that she has never intended to tell women the "right" way to have a baby, but has, instead, tried to strengthen women's confidence by telling the birth stories of womankind.

Rediscovering Birth is a beautifully illustrated history of birth and well worth reading. But enough about the book. Our conversation turned to why parenthood has become a battleground for so many of us.

Sometimes it's a battle just to conceive. Then the pressure's on to create and rear the perfect baby. It's a battle to survive as a parent without social supports. It's a battle to combine work/career with child-rearing. It's a battle to keep marriages and other relationships going under these combined pressures.

"I think it's very difficult for women nowadays because they are rarely part of a network of women supporting each other. Mothers tend to be socially isolated and have to engage in complicated manoeuvres to arrange childcare or to find cover if they are sick," Kitzinger says.

"I think motherhood is undervalued in our society, and we are not a child-friendly society. You are allowed to be a mother in the workplace only provided that your children are invisible and when your children are visible they must be seen and not heard," she adds.

Many parents, especially mothers, have bought into the notion that babies are products that reflect the intelligence and creativity of their parents. "Mothers are being told that they are supposed to be educating their babies almost from the moment they are born," says Kitzinger.

Instead of relying on a mother's most valuable tool - instinct, many women seek out the advice of "experts", then feel anxious when they cannot live up to the high standards some "experts" impose.

Mother of five daughters, now grown, Kitzinger recalls having a paediatrician to stay at her house for a weekend while her children were young. After observing family life chez Kitzinger, the paediatrician complimented the young mother on her parenting style.

"You talk to your children like they're adults and you practise benign neglect," he told her.

Rather than smothering her children or interfering in their natural inclinations towards play, Kitzinger simply let them at it. "Benign neglect" is a way of describing freedom to choose, to make mistakes and to learn.

"Today's parents spend too much time ferrying their children to sports, music, ballet, fencing, drama, yoga. . . when what children really need is space and time just to discover themselves and the world," she believes. In nurturing their children, parents are expected to be artists, psychologists, communicators and experts who can answer all their children's questions - which is impossible, so it sets parents up for failure before they even begin, she points out.

Kitzinger has argued for nearly 40 years that at the epicentre of this battleground between what is natural, instinctive and nurturing and what is controlled, intellectual and achievement-oriented is the childbirth experience itself, which has been medicalised by society and thus stolen away from mothers and midwives. Preaching this message has been a lifetime's work for Kitzinger, whose influential first book, The Experience of Childbirth, was published 38 years ago.

She wrote it "on a high" in the six weeks following the birth of her first child, when she was filled with the excitement and wonder of the process of giving birth. The author of 23 books published in 20 languages, Kitzinger has been described as doing for childbirth "what Florence Nightingale did for nursing and Marie Stopes did for contraception".

The core of the Kitzinger philosophy - which she has culled from studying birth practices in primitive societies and in Europe before the encroachment of the obstetrician - is that if given a supportive, loving, birthing environment, mothers will instinctively engage in a "birth dance" which speeds labour and minimises pain. If surrounded by people who stroke, caress, hold and support her, the mother can let go of the pain-enhancing fear.

Her long campaign has not been for "natural" childbirth, but simply for a "birth culture" in which women's experiences and needs are acknowledged.

The pressures are the same with mothering: often our inclination to just be with our babies during the first year of life is undermined by the social and economic pressures to return to work after a few months of maternity leave. The attempt to find high-quality childcare - and to pay for it - then becomes a battle in itself.

The only one of Kitzinger's five daughters to have children has solved this by living and working at home on the Kitzinger estate and manages her mother's website. A huge paddock contains small, wild animals of all kinds and the children are encouraged to play there instead of watching TV all the time. For them, it's an ideal life but one which most of us can only dream of - just like the descriptions of birth in Kitzinger's books. She may have spent a lifetime campaigning for change, but we still have a long way to go.

Rediscovering Birth (Little, Brown, £18.99 stg). For further information on childbirth practices, see www.sheilakitzinger.com