Reflections on life and work from Aotearoa New Zealand
Kelly Dombroski, University of Canterbury This year, the small Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu announced a plan to ban disposable nappies, as well as other throwaway items such as plastic bags. While some commentators praised the move, others worried about what the alternatives might be, and how this might affect household workloads, particularly for women.... Continue Reading →
It is a milestone week. My baby is now past the six week mark. We saw our wonderful wise midwife for the last time professionally and were transferred into the care of our medical centre. I took my son for his vaccinations, somewhat more anxiously than with my older three: a Facebook friend had called... Continue Reading →
How do we become scholars that produce quality thinking and research, and stay sane in an academic environment where bringing in salary recovery dollars and churning out publication 'fluff' sometimes seems more important than deep and rigorous research and writing? Many New Zealand academics would have faced their CVs with some angst this year as... Continue Reading →
I recently gave a talk for a Homebirth Canterbury event. In it, I considered some of the connections between the #metoo campaign around sexual harassment and assault, and the #enough campaign aimed at ending harassment and assault in birthing. Drawing on a research project with Katharine McKinnon and Stephen Healy, I think about how birth... Continue Reading →
I am just so ridiculously pleased to finally have this article out. I first presented the material that became this article in July 2011 in Sydney, Australia. I have been on two writing retreats where I've worked at least in part on this article. I have rewritten it countless times into three or four different... Continue Reading →
This is re-post of a piece co-authored with Stephen Healy for The Daily Marinade , first published July 15th 2017. In a post circulating on facebook from 2016, a woman describes her struggle with giving up alcohol in a society that seems to require women to drink to just get through life. Giving up drinking... Continue Reading →
I am about three chapters in to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's book Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. In the same way that Richard Rohr seems to express my thoughts before I even am conscious of having them in the area of spiritual practice and belief, Puig de la Bellacasa seems to... Continue Reading →
In her book The Logic of Care: Healthcare and the Problem of Patient Choice, Annemarie Mol relates a story that partially prompted her philosophical investigation into choice and care in the Dutch healthcare system: It is still the early 1990s. I am pregnant and 36. A national committee of experts in the Netherlands where I... Continue Reading →
Last week I was chronically sleep deprived, and even when my son was managing to sleep at night, I was often lying awake thinking about work and relationships. This has been an issue for me at stressful times during my PhD and my academic career, and especially when each of my children are between 1... Continue Reading →
So, I am really tired. I am also coming down with something, or just struggling against a low-grade cold. My son is sleeping better this week, but even when he is asleep, I wake up after four hours or so. After all, that's how much sleep I have been accustomed to getting in the last... Continue Reading →
I have long been aware of the statistics that place planned homebirth on a par with public hospital births in terms of best outcomes for mothers and babies. For just as long, I have been aware that births in private hospitals have the worst outcomes generally. This did not really surprise me when I discovered... Continue Reading →
Throwntogetherness 