Midwifery and the Medicalization of Childbirth: Comparative PerspectivesThis book provides an introduction to the sociological study of midwifery. The readings have been selected to highlight the interplay between midwifery and medicine, reflecting the medicalisation of childbirth. It highlights the major themes in both a historical and a current context, as well as western and non-western societies. Two major themes underlie the organisation of this book: that the conception of midwifery must be broadened to encompass a sociological perspective; and that the ongoing trend toward the medicalisation of midwifery is crucial to an understanding of the historical, current, and future status of midwifery. By medicalisation of childbirth and midwifery the author mean the increasing tendency for women to prefer a hospital delivery to a home delivery, the increasing trend toward the use of technology and clinical intervention in childbirth, and the determination of medical practitioners to confine the role played by midwives in pregnancy and childbirth, if any, to a purely subordinate one. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 5 | |
Introduction | 43 |
Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World | 53 |
A Case Study | 63 |
Louyse Bourgeois and the Emergence of Modern Midwifery | 75 |
Is Childbirth any Place for a Woman? The Decline of Midwifery in EighteenthCentury England | 89 |
A Fifteenth Century Witchcraft Case | 97 |
A Baby is Born in Merchang | 235 |
A Descriptive Study of the Changing Roles and Practices of Traditional Birth Attendants in Zimbabwe | 245 |
The Traditional Midwife of Yemen? | 259 |
The Social Organization of Childbearing | 265 |
An Alternative to Unattended Delivery A Training Programme for Village Midwives in Papua New Guinea | 279 |
Introduction | 287 |
Our Relationships with Medicine Nursing LayMidwives Consumers and Health Care Economists | 301 |
The Trap of Legal Recognition | 309 |
The Decline of the Midwife | 101 |
The Different Stages of the Elimination of Midwives in Quebec | 117 |
Midwifery Regulation Education and Practice in the Netherlands during the Nineteenth Century | 127 |
The Midwife in Contemporary Industrialised Society | 145 |
Denmark Sweden and the Netherlands | 155 |
Maternity Home Care Assistants in the Netherlands | 163 |
The Role and Responsibilities of the Midwife in Scotland | 173 |
The Domino Delivery Scheme in Somerset Allows Community Midwives to use their Midwifery Skills to the full | 179 |
Changing Childbirth? The British Midwifes Role in Research and Innovation | 183 |
Autonomous Midwifery at the Margins | 195 |
The Cultural Experience of Birth | 205 |
A Cross Cultural Perspective | 215 |
A Guatemalan Study | 221 |
Who Cares for Women? Science versus Love in Midwifery Today | 319 |
Elimination of the Midwife | 329 |
The European Midwife | 337 |
Interview with Professor GerritJan Kloosterman | 341 |
Six Lessons for Midwives | 347 |
Changing Midwifery towards a Sociological Perspective | 353 |
The Future of Midwifery | 365 |
Which Way Forward? | 371 |
Profession with a Future | 373 |
Proposals for the Future of the Maternity Services | 375 |
A Personal View | 385 |
| 389 | |
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American antenatal Asmah's autonomy baby British Caesarean section child childbearing clients clinic Cosminsky countries cultural delivered delivery DeVries doctors Dutch examination female forceps Gynecology History home birth home care assistant important infant intervention Journal knowledge labor licensing London Louyse Bourgeois Lowis lying-in hospitals male man-midwife maternity home maternity services McCaffery and Porter medical profession medicine midwife's midwifery midwifery practice midwifery training mortality rates mother Netherlands normal Nova Science Publishers nurse-midwifery nurse-midwives nursing Oakley obstetric obstetricians occupation Oxford Papua New Guinea patients perinatal mortality Perrette perspective physicians placenta position postnatal practitioners pregnancy pregnant women prenatal problems professional regulation relationship responsibility role rural Sapiah skills social societies Sociology Soranus South Hospital status surgeons sweatbath TBAs Teijlingen traditional birth attendants trained midwives United University Press untrained village VMWs Wertz woman World Health Organization Zimbabwe
Popular passages
Page 15 - On the other hand, the activity is not predominantly intellectual in character and the responsibility is not original or primary. The physician thinks, decides, and orders; the pharmacist obeys — obeys, of course, with discretion, intelligence, and skill — yet in the end obeys and does not originate. Pharmacy, therefore, is an arm added to the medical profession, a special and distinctly higher form of handicraft, not a profession.