“The Mindy Project”: Mindy’s got a beef with midwives
"30 Rock" and "Parks and Rec" send up health trends from the perspective of a zany liberal. "Mindy's" just nasty
Topics: the mindy project, Mindy Kaling, midwives, TV, Television, Entertainment News
What does Mindy Kaling have against midwives? Something! On last night’s episode of “The Mindy Project,” two smooth-talking, Zen-having male midwives (I don’t have the stats to back me up here, but I’d bet whatever you’ve got that men do not make up a significant percentage of midwives in this country) began poaching patients from Mindy Lahiri’s practice. Mindy’s male colleagues tried to retain their patients in a bro-ish and counterproductive way: by calling pregnant women attractive and offering them a discount. Only Mindy could stop the defections, and she did so by storming upstairs into the midwives’ gong-having, holistic-themed offices and scaring her patients into sticking with the doctors. “If you are a healthy 22-year-old, that baby is going to fly out of you no matter who delivers you,” Mindy explained. “But if you’re middle-aged, obese, have diabetes, then who’s going to help you?” Because there is apparently no middle ground between being 22 and being high-risk, the patients, abashed, filed back downstairs.
I’m not particularly interested in fact-checking this episode — though some midwife might want to do that. Midwives may not be doctors, but they actually do get trained! They’re not necessarily anti-vaccination! But I do want to raise some numbers, to make a larger point about “The Mindy Project’s” still under development tone. In 2009 midwives delivered 8.1 percent of American babies. Most of these deliveries took place in a hospital (less than 1 percent of American births take place at home). Midwives are not a big fixture in most pregnant Americans’ lives— unless you’re a certain kind of American.
Midwife-assisted birth has, in the words of the New York Times, become a “status symbol” among health-minded, affluent, urban woman who are likely educated enough not to be bossed around by their doctors and probably belong to their neighborhood CSA. In other words, midwifery is a well-meaning, runty and undervalued profession to pick on, unless you’re in a certain demographic, where it has become as omnipresent as crazy baby names. That demographic contains Mindy and, presumably, a good portion of the show’s hoped for audience, which is why midwifery, narrow as it may be, is a good premise for “The Mindy Project.” Its writers and audience have feelings about and experience with midwifery as practiced in swanky, upscale New York City offices.
Willa Paskin is Salon's staff TV writer. More Willa Paskin.




Comments
12 Comments