Brought to bed : childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Brought to bed : childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950
Oxford University Press, 1986
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. [219]-261
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
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ISBN 9780195038439
Description
This is a comprehensive history of women and childbirth in America. Many of the basic changes that have occurred since 1750 resulted from two factors: the replacement of midwives and other female support systems by male doctors in the actual delivery process, and the movement of childbirth from the home to hospitals.
- Volume
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: pbk ISBN 9780195056907
Description
Based on personal accounts by birthing women and their medical attendants, Brought to Bed reveals how childbirth has changed from colonial times to the present.
Judith Walzer Leavitt's study focuses on the traditional woman-centered home-birthing practices, their replacement by male doctors, and the movement from the home to the hospital. She explains that childbearing women and their physicians gradually changed birth places because they believed the increased medicalization would make giving birth safer and more comfortable. Ironically, because of infection, infant and maternal mortality did not immediately decline. She concludes that
birthing women held considerable power in determining labor and delivery events as long as childbirth remained in the home. The move to the hospital in the twentieth century gave the medical profession the upper hand. Leavitt also discusses recent events in American obstetrics that illustrate how women
have attempted to retrieve some of the traditional women-and family-centered aspects of childbirth.
by "Nielsen BookData"