When it comes to birth, men can be fragile creatures.

This piece in The New York Times spoke volumes to me. It's an ordinary bloke's account of his failure to cope with his daughter's early arrival on the bathroom floor.

I don't like a great deal of the sentiment, such as his expectation of how the birth would proceed:

I had been expecting the birth to occur in an orderly fashion at the hospital: the midwife and nurses in scrubs, regular reports on how many centimeters her cervix had dilated, an opportunity to hold Leslie’s hand and wipe her brow. I had wanted to be the useful partner — and the witness. When the baby arrived, I would accept her from the nurse before placing her on Leslie’s chest, basking in the tableau of mother with newborn child.

Could his vision be any more polluted by the patriarchal myth that women need to be flat on their backs surrounded by a team of experts in order to do what most of them have been doing either alone or in the company of family members ever since we became bipedal? Does he have any idea of the history behind his desire to be the first to hold the baby? (In ancient Rome the father would be given the baby in order to see if it met his approval, if it did not it was exposed or sold into slavery.) Does he have any idea how useless (and annoying) brow mopping is? (If I had a dollar for the number of times I've seen women giggle over their husband's earnest brow mopping on Mummy Bulletin Boards... If my husband had tried that he'd have been flung across the room and possibly banished.) My guess is that our author is oblivious to both the implications behind his desire to be passed the baby and his misguided utility. I can't really blame him. He's a product of western culture, particularly American culture. So, when his wife yelled that she was having the baby in the bathroom, he did what he'd been taught to do - panic and call an ambulance. The birth of his daughter without him brought home a stark reality: he wasn't needed at all, it was quite possible he'd made things worse.

I think that unless we are careful, instead of being a participant in something wonderful, men like this one can be made to feel like irrelevant spectators. For the raw truth is, they are not needed at the birth. Natural and water birth pioneer Michael Odent goes so far as to say that male partners should not be allowed at births, that they only get in the way. I half agree.

I definitely wanted my husband there for the birth of my second, but I didn't take it for granted that my partner would be there the way I did with my first. He was very deliberately included in a team of half a dozen people and prepared appropriately for the event. The poor man, who comes from a very patriarchal home, was lectured to, shown videos, read to from books, made to be my advocate when I needed one, and given very strict instructions as to the boundaries of his role. Just like most other Australian blokes, his experience of birth was limited to movie portrayals and anecdotes from older relatives so he needed an entire re-education: history, medicine, male power and the myth of control. The man stepped up to the plate like an absolute hero and ended up catching his daughter (I was on my hands and knees for that one). He'll never forget it and neither will I.

My husband was the antithesis of the helpless, panic stricken ambulance caller. He knew what he could do, what I only I could do and exactly how he could facilitate it without getting in the way. He was amazing.

However, had he displayed a reluctance to be swayed from the patriarchal medical model he'd have been excluded. It would have been horrible and heart-breaking but I would have done it. The birth was both something I had to do, yet was also something that was happening to me - it was a tug-of-war between me, my body and a baby clamouring to get out into the world. I would never risk having someone present who might disrupt the delicate relationship I needed to establish with my body to achieve a good outcome. Husbands who panic, or who encourage their wives to accept interventions to satisfy their need to feel like "something is being done", are not capable of acting in the best interest of their wives. They'd be better off in the waiting room nursing their cigars.

To summarise, any man who believes that birth should be orderly and furthermore, CONTROLLED should definitely be banned from attending births. Most of them love their wives and want to be supportve, but their panic in the face of their helplessness is not, well, helpful.