Early Pregnancy in Women - Essay Example

Cross Cultural Perspective Mod 3 SLP Overview and Heritage Pregnancy For these women pregnancy comes early in life. Most women are married when theyare 15 to 19 years old and with arranged marriages they may not know until they are married. Fromm that moment there are very closely spaced multiple pregnancies. In most cases pregnancy is not considered a womans choice although that has begun to change somewhat. The gender of the child is considered as part of the womans fertility. Girl children are considered very lowly and the woman hopes that she will have a boy child and please her husband. (Burral, Desjardins, & Herling, 2002), to carry on the family name, and to support parents when they are elders. There have even been many incidences of sex determination and abortion of female babies (Sheth, 2006). Girls are considered a liability. Pregnancy is considered what is called a "hot state". Meaning that you can overheat easily and should do everything to assure that that does not happen or it may cause miscarriage. This means that they should not eat hot foods such as eggs, meat etc but should eat cool foods like fruit and vegetables and they should never overeat. They believe that throughout their pregnancy, the baby is subject to evil spirits and many rituals are held throughout the pregnancy to protect the baby. Giving birth is a passive thing for the East Indian mother (Fisher, 2008). Women are expected to be stoic and do exactly what the healthcare provider tells her to do. Men are never in the delivery room and are not usually really near. The sex of the child should not be told to the mother before she delivers the placenta because the belief is that her disappointment will be so great that she will stop contracting and have problems from that. The fear, of course, is that the baby might be a girl. Breast feeding is encouraged and generally practiced up to 3 years after the birth. The mother is expected to take 40 days to recuperate after the birth. The mother is expected to stay home as this is a time for her to get her strength and energy back from the delivery. During the 6th day of this time, relatives and friends will come to her house and a holy day will be held in the name of the baby at that time. Parenting is somewhat different according to whether or not this is a US immigrant or a mother who is still in India. If she lives in America, her parenting style is generally authoritative while when living in India it is authoritarian.(Jambunathan & Counselman, 2002).Authoritarian parenting leads to children who are dependent, unhappy and socially withdrawn. This happens because the parent desires high levels of respect, obedient children and who have little input into personal or family decisions. Authoritative parents show high levels of respect for their children, threatening them as independent individuals capable of making their own decisions. Nutrition Food in the form of plant matter, according to the Eastern Indian culture was given to man by the Gods to nourish him. Most Indians are vegetarians. They eat foods cooked in aromatic spices such as garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin and mustard seed. Rice is standard at every meal and is usually served with a thin soup and dry curried vegetables. They use seasonal additions such as nuts, mangos, and bananas and for desert have cream cheese balls, ground almonds and pancakes in a sweet syrup. Mangos, pomegranates, melon, apricots, apples and strawberries are not unusual. The frequently finish the meal with Betal which is a leaf with an assortment of digestive spices such as anise seed, cloves, and cardamom. Most eat two to three meals per day with a big meal at lunch and a small meal at supper (Burrall, 2002) Washing ones hands before a meal is highly important. East Indian people eat with the fingers on their right hand only. Women are expected to cook all the meals and men are served. Women usually eat separately. The only time when this is different is when women have a menses, they are not allowed to cook during that time. Because of the vegetarian diet, there are many dietary deficiencies, especially for women. Women are frequently protein malnourished or have beriberi or thiamine deficiency. They may also have pellagra or niacin deficiency ore iron deficiency anemia. These nutritional problems often cause nutritional weakness, fatigue, muscle wasting, edema, mental confusion and paralysis for these women. Not only is nutritional deficiency a problem but the fact that Indians feel that an illness is most likely karma can certainly be a problem with health promotion in this country. Almost always they will seek a traditional healer rather than a physician so any health promotion will need to include them. There is however, as part of their "knowledge of life"(Burrall, 2002) a lot of emphasis on prevention of problems for example not eating too much to prevent obesity. There is a belief that the root cause of an illness must be treated and that may be something from outside the body. Many medicinal plants are used and they were actually one of the first societies to focus on the use of medicinal plants. High Risk Behaviors Unfortunately for the Eastern Indians, high risk behaviors are quite high. The population of India in general has an Aids epidemic while the sale of sex on the streets is quite common and with the poor treatment of women, this is where many go. WHO completed a rapid assessment recently and the results were not good. The average age of a drug user in India is 35.9 and that user usually starts at the age of 15-19. The average number of drugs per day taken is 2.3 hits or injections. Alcohol is very much the same but the average age of use goes up. That average age is 46. The age it starts is very much the same. Much of alcohol abuse and some of the drug abuse begins in a young age as a part of some of the rituals that are held. Sharing syringes is a common occurrence and Hpe B affects 7.5% of the drug population while Hep C affects 94.3%. 13.1 % of drug and alcohol abusers have syphilis. Alcohol causes many problems among the East Indians. This is true because their religion is clearly against the use of alcohol. Indian women do not drink alcohol at all. Drinking in this society can become an integrative and yet disruptive presence very quickly. It is met with a very high degree of ambivalence from the children and other adults in the family, inconsistent socialization, sanctions against excessive drinking, and irregular pressure to drink. Most people who drink feel social pressure to drink. This pressure starts young, especially for men (Altaf, Shah, & Zaidi, 2007). Alcoholics in India cause a great deal of strife among the family. Children are taught by the religion not to drink yet they see fathers who are not only drinking but getting drunk. This problem brings about great issues between the man and his mother or wife or both. Male alcoholics reported 90% of the time that there was a very strong conflict between themselves and their mothers and wives. Children who see a father that drinks often drinks as the socialization into alcohol outweighs the religious teaching and because it is considered not legal to drink excessively in India, many of these children become incarcerated early in life, leaving an impoverished family. References Altaf A, Shah S, Zaidi N. et.al. (2007). High risk behaviors of injection drugs. Harm Reduction Journal 4(7): 219-240. Burrall W, Desjardins C, & Herling L. (2002). Asian Indians. Fisher J. (2009). Issues for South Asian Indians, sexuality, fertility, and children. Journal of American Board of Family Practice. 16(2): 151-5. Jambunathan S, & Counselman K. (2002). Parenting attitudes of Asian Indian Mothers living in the US and in India. Early Child Development and Care. 172:657-662. Sheth S. (2006). Missing female births in India. The Lancet. 367 (9506). 185. Read More