Educational Media Reviews Online

Filmmaker Irene Lusztig sets herself an ambitious course with her documentary The Motherhood Archives. The film attempts to weave a narrative from numerous archival educational, industrial, and medical training films about pregnancy and childbirth by discussing a variety of subjects such as pain, obstetric anesthesia and the Twilight sleep movement, and the psychoprophylactic method of childbirth (PPM, later known as Lamaze). The archival footage is the real star of The Motherhood Archives, giving viewers a simultaneously fascinating, horrifying, perplexing, and sadly comical look at how maternity has evolved from the 19th to the 21st century.

Voiceover narration serves as a contextualizing device throughout the film, although the style feels forced at times. Lusztig also uses three contemporary interviews with individual women discussing their pregnancies to provide a structural framing device. However, these juxtaposed interviews, while interesting, seem a bit out of place given the heavy focus on archival footage in the rest of the film. Ultimately, The Motherhood Archives serves to remind viewers that pregnancy and motherhood are heavily influenced by the cultural and social contexts of the time. The film may not be suitable for younger viewers due to some nudity and graphic depictions of childbirth, but it would be appropriate in high school or college courses focusing on reproduction and sexuality, women’s health, women’s history, or the history of medicine.