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Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human
Might pregnancy form women just as much as children?
When we talk about pregnancy, we too often end up talking clinically and sentimentally. Pregnancy is medical details and a whirl of emotions. It is vitamins and baby showers and feelings. But it is so much more.
In Showing, Agnes Howard takes us beyond clinical reductionism and fluffy sentimentality to show us how to take pregnancy seriously as hard but important work. It is not just a bodily process, she argues, but an active work of care—one that underscores the generosity and mutual dependence we all require in order to live. It is an act of “radical hospitality” that shows us all what it means to be human.
Howard delves into prenatal care literature from the Christian tradition to find images and vocabulary that elevate and honor pregnancy—not only for the benefit of expectant parents, but also their communities and the church. Taking pregnancy seriously does not entail viewing it as a woman’s only role or romanticizing it. Instead, Showing maintains that thinking well about pregnancy can help not only childbearing women but all who surround them understand how to live together more faithfully.
When we talk about pregnancy, we too often end up talking clinically and sentimentally. Pregnancy is medical details and a whirl of emotions. It is vitamins and baby showers and feelings. But it is so much more.
In Showing, Agnes Howard takes us beyond clinical reductionism and fluffy sentimentality to show us how to take pregnancy seriously as hard but important work. It is not just a bodily process, she argues, but an active work of care—one that underscores the generosity and mutual dependence we all require in order to live. It is an act of “radical hospitality” that shows us all what it means to be human.
Howard delves into prenatal care literature from the Christian tradition to find images and vocabulary that elevate and honor pregnancy—not only for the benefit of expectant parents, but also their communities and the church. Taking pregnancy seriously does not entail viewing it as a woman’s only role or romanticizing it. Instead, Showing maintains that thinking well about pregnancy can help not only childbearing women but all who surround them understand how to live together more faithfully.
- GenresParentingNonfiction
216 pages, Hardcover
Published March 31, 2020
6 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 3, 2022
This book has a lot of interesting thought. The discussion of contents of birth manuals can bog down the reading a bit. But, it is important to recognize that we all came to be in our mother's womb.
August 17, 2022
3.5* but rounding up because while Showing did not live up to my hopes for it, I have thought about it many times since I finished reading it.
The subtitle of this book is “what pregnancy tells us about being human,” which led me to expect from the entire book what was really only present in about two chapters. Howard (rightly) argues throughout the pages that pregnancy is deserving of our intentional consideration regarding what the gestation period means for us as humans, besides merely the physical/medical implications. This experience is an experience which is “powerfully near to forces of life and death and to the divine work of crafting new souls.” Howard says that “understanding childbearing well enriches our senses of who we are as human beings.”
She spends much time examining the understanding, customs and culture of pregnancy as it has changed over time. This was interesting, but I really hoped for more meditation on how exactly we can better understand pregnancy to enrich our understanding of human living.
Nonetheless, I found many fascinating arguments, thoughts, and takeaways throughout Howard’s work:
-“To believe that God gives every person a soul, directly and individually, is to believe that each pregnant woman is host to a kind of visitation from God, is honored as audience and collaborator, a watcher at a holy place, attending God doing something new. She is present at this creation.”
-“You spent the first, formative parts of your life in the body of some particular woman. Dependence, not independence, is the default setting for human existence.”
-The linea nigra as a line which highlights the connection between ancestry and posterity as points on a continuum, “from the navel recalling her origins to the place where descendants enter the world.”
-And lastly, this most FASCINATING exploration of microchimerism: a mother and fetus each transfer cells to the body of the other. The fetus is therefore composed not only of the mixed DNA inherited from its parents, but also keeps some of its mother’s cells in its body. A mother can retain stray fetal DNA in her bloodstream FOR DECADES after the child is born. Further, “microchimerism is not thought to be limited to just the bi-directional exchange of mother and fetal cells: cells from older siblings and even maternal grandmother cells might also be transferred to the fetus (!!!!)… We do not only unfold from each other, we remain in and of each other persistently. Women who have been pregnant are no longer just themselves… We are, all of us, marked by the experience of pregnancy, whether or not we have ourselves been pregnant. A little awe is in order.”
The subtitle of this book is “what pregnancy tells us about being human,” which led me to expect from the entire book what was really only present in about two chapters. Howard (rightly) argues throughout the pages that pregnancy is deserving of our intentional consideration regarding what the gestation period means for us as humans, besides merely the physical/medical implications. This experience is an experience which is “powerfully near to forces of life and death and to the divine work of crafting new souls.” Howard says that “understanding childbearing well enriches our senses of who we are as human beings.”
She spends much time examining the understanding, customs and culture of pregnancy as it has changed over time. This was interesting, but I really hoped for more meditation on how exactly we can better understand pregnancy to enrich our understanding of human living.
Nonetheless, I found many fascinating arguments, thoughts, and takeaways throughout Howard’s work:
-“To believe that God gives every person a soul, directly and individually, is to believe that each pregnant woman is host to a kind of visitation from God, is honored as audience and collaborator, a watcher at a holy place, attending God doing something new. She is present at this creation.”
-“You spent the first, formative parts of your life in the body of some particular woman. Dependence, not independence, is the default setting for human existence.”
-The linea nigra as a line which highlights the connection between ancestry and posterity as points on a continuum, “from the navel recalling her origins to the place where descendants enter the world.”
-And lastly, this most FASCINATING exploration of microchimerism: a mother and fetus each transfer cells to the body of the other. The fetus is therefore composed not only of the mixed DNA inherited from its parents, but also keeps some of its mother’s cells in its body. A mother can retain stray fetal DNA in her bloodstream FOR DECADES after the child is born. Further, “microchimerism is not thought to be limited to just the bi-directional exchange of mother and fetal cells: cells from older siblings and even maternal grandmother cells might also be transferred to the fetus (!!!!)… We do not only unfold from each other, we remain in and of each other persistently. Women who have been pregnant are no longer just themselves… We are, all of us, marked by the experience of pregnancy, whether or not we have ourselves been pregnant. A little awe is in order.”
May 27, 2020
Agnes R. Howard’s Showing is a spiritual invitation to naval gazing. She approaches pregnancy from an objective, academic and theological lens, and examines the multifacet lessons that pregnancy offers humanity, not solely mother and child. Pregnancy is not simply a dress rehearsal for parenthood. “When a pregnant woman passes beyond the point when her condition can be concealed behind clothes, we say she is ‘showing.’ She is showing: in her actions and physical changes, the pregnant woman is showing some nonnegotiable facts of human life—our reliance on relationship, generosity, and physical presence...A woman serves as a witness in two ways: first as one who witnesses in a unique way the formation of a new person, and second is one who shows others what is involved in bearing life....In childbearing, the witness of the woman with child communicates in a ‘semi public’ way our mutual dependence, participation in creation, and invitation to charity… offering oneself in the service of another is the charity women offered to their children” and the perpetuation of humanity.
Pregnancy is an act of virtue. “Hope, that bright hard way between despair and presumption, seems exactly the thing that women must keep when the process discourages and fetal outcomes are not guaranteed. Faith gives the assurance of the unseen, the existence of the not yet invisible child and his or her place in good creation. Temperance, the correct measure of enjoyment and pleasure of the flesh, may well describe the abstentions of the period. Justice, giving each his due, is rendered in providing the dependent fetus what is needed to come into life. Prudence frames the whole as women discern and do the best for their own sake and on behalf of the expected child. Courage and the perilous passage of giving birth often has been compared to the battlefield bravery of men. Charity might be the most obvious of all, as a woman gives because it is good for the child to exist. Hospitality makes physical and practical gestures of charity...Prenatal care could be cast in terms of abundance, making more of you to have more to give to the other.” Perhaps it takes a village to raise a mother.
If motherhood is a marathon, pregnancy is an athlete in training. “Part of the work of pregnancy is understanding what it is.“ Just say “know”! If reading has become requisite to the pregnancy experience, Agnes R. Howard’s Showing provides not only the perfect baby shower gift for an expectant mother but for the bedside table of every other! For “the fact that we all ‘unfold’ from one another is among the most stunning features of human life.”
Pregnancy is an act of virtue. “Hope, that bright hard way between despair and presumption, seems exactly the thing that women must keep when the process discourages and fetal outcomes are not guaranteed. Faith gives the assurance of the unseen, the existence of the not yet invisible child and his or her place in good creation. Temperance, the correct measure of enjoyment and pleasure of the flesh, may well describe the abstentions of the period. Justice, giving each his due, is rendered in providing the dependent fetus what is needed to come into life. Prudence frames the whole as women discern and do the best for their own sake and on behalf of the expected child. Courage and the perilous passage of giving birth often has been compared to the battlefield bravery of men. Charity might be the most obvious of all, as a woman gives because it is good for the child to exist. Hospitality makes physical and practical gestures of charity...Prenatal care could be cast in terms of abundance, making more of you to have more to give to the other.” Perhaps it takes a village to raise a mother.
If motherhood is a marathon, pregnancy is an athlete in training. “Part of the work of pregnancy is understanding what it is.“ Just say “know”! If reading has become requisite to the pregnancy experience, Agnes R. Howard’s Showing provides not only the perfect baby shower gift for an expectant mother but for the bedside table of every other! For “the fact that we all ‘unfold’ from one another is among the most stunning features of human life.”
December 15, 2024
This really didn't know what it wanted to be. Was it a treatise against the medicalization of pregnancy? A history of our understanding of pregnancy? The chapter on virtue just came out of nowhere. The audience was vague. And I don't feel like it delivered on its subtitle's promise.
There were some interesting and well-thought-out points(summarized in other reviews). I didn't know some of the historical information. Overall, I was disappointed. In a world where fewer and fewer women are becoming pregnant, fewer and fewer men are permanently connected to women who are pregnant, and the stress and strain for moms is at an all-time high, and support is at an all-time low, this could have aimed at loftier goals.
There were some interesting and well-thought-out points(summarized in other reviews). I didn't know some of the historical information. Overall, I was disappointed. In a world where fewer and fewer women are becoming pregnant, fewer and fewer men are permanently connected to women who are pregnant, and the stress and strain for moms is at an all-time high, and support is at an all-time low, this could have aimed at loftier goals.
December 31, 2020
This book should be required reading for every woman. It is a bold excavation into what it means to be human, a treatise relevant for those who have experienced pregnancy and those who have not. Howard approaches pregnancy and birthing with a startling and refreshing moral seriousness. She tactfully ascribes long overdue respect without reducing women to procreation or fetishizing the spiritual significance.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
February 16, 2021
This is a book that was "not for me". It reads like a dissertation; Howard set out to delve into the history of how (mostly western) society has made sense of pregnancy. The writing is dense and convoluted. Her thesis, that with increasing scientific knowledge we've become less appreciative of what pregnancy means for humanity (essentially we are more knowledgeable of HOW pregnancy occurs and progresses, but less aware of WHAT pregnancy means for all people spiritually/metaphorically), was apt but I found some of her insights did not fit my experience. There were a few parts that really resonated (e.g., how pregnancy reflects a deep bravery), but mostly I felt like I was slogging through a history lesson and then a sermon about how pregnancy reflects womanly virtues (for example, I do not feel my pregnancy embodies hospitality. If anything I feel like my body has been somewhat invaded by my baby).
1.5/5
1.5/5
August 14, 2021
A beautiful synthesis of where Americans are in the development of birth culture, of metaphysical questions about the female, and of the human experience of pregnancy. Howard's contributions in the area of virtue, identity, and metaphor are delightful. I highly recommend this read for any pregnant woman or post-pregnant woman who want to set her experience in the context of history and theology and discover pregnancy as something more than merely a medical, scientific experience. Pregnancy has inherent meaning. Pregnancy is integral to every human's experience and everyone can learn to be a better human by contemplating it.
May 11, 2020
I loved a lot of what Howard had to say. It brought historical perspective to some of our traditions, and it helped me view our modern traditions as part of a larger whole rather than just “the way it is.” The writing was a bit hard to follow at times, and I’m not sure if it was due to syntax or just the way the sentences did or did not jive for me. Definitely worth reading.
February 19, 2023
I couldn’t identify a thesis throughout the entirety of the book? As far as I could tell, there weren’t any points arguing for or against things, just a recap of the past and present views on pregnancy. There were a lot of words to communicate very little (if any) new ideas or concepts about such a mystical and magical time in a woman’s life.
November 18, 2024
A lot of it was about the history of pregnancy and birth which I did not find super interesting, but the second half I loved!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews