After her comments on Genesis, Bruzelius, clad in a dressy black suit with vibrant pink and red flowers on the jacket, steered the discussion into the readings for the week: Dr. Lamaze's writings on his well-known breathing techniques, which he believed could make childbirth painless.
As the Lamaze reading demonstrates, the material for the class is pulled from a variety of genre. The syllabus ranges from movies such as "The Manchurian Candidate" to the literature of Simone de Bouvoire. It even includes Little House in the Big Students praise the diversity of the syllabus because they say it reflects the assorted ways in which our society thinks about motherhood. "Laura Ingalls Wilder shows how the syllabus is not strictly high culture," Vie-Carpenter says. "I read her when I was ten." "I think Dr. Bruzelius's point is that we read about motherhood in a lot more ways then we notice," Vie-Carpenter says. During a discussion of Lamaze, a male student--a football player--observed that if his leg gets bent backwards while playing ball, "it's supposed to hurt." The same is true of child-birth, he said. The class chuckled at the comparison of football to childbirth, but the male insights are appreciated by the class, according to students. Bruzelius says she was surprised by the male turnout for her class, saying the first time she taught it at Yale, the entire class was female. However, she emphasizes that "I don't think this is just a class for women." The women students in the class, while also surprised by the male turnout, welcome the new perspective the men bring to the class. "Sometimes the guys will say something I haven't even thought of," says Vie-Carpenter. "It's important to keep some sort of perspective and not get tied up in the femaleness of it all." In short, the men contribute a new dimension to the discussion, Bruzelius says. Ultimately, awareness is the point of the class, she says, because the class isn't going to solve any problems of motherhood. "I can't help the students think these problems through to the end," Bruzelius said. "I can help them think about maternity.