Midwifery

Midwifery in North American Society

Lack of knowledge on the part of some North Americans regarding midwifery is due to several factors. Briefly, they include the medical takeover of reproductive health care, growing social and economic support for technological medicine, patriarchal domination of health care, colonial policies which propped up western European medical practices and many other factors. Birth went from being a healthy, normal event to a highly medicalized one. Part of this medicalization was due to the fact that by the 1960s, fetal health became a high priority for families, physicians, and society in general. Birth rates had declined and couples were having fewer children. Improving pregnancy outcomes thus became more important. Also, infant mortality statistics became global indicators for a nation's well-being.

Most contemporary North Americans—across ethno-racial groups, cultures, geographical locations, social classes, ages, and other categories—generally [Page 765]consider the best birth to be a high-tech(nology) birth and labor, and delivery best done in a setting where people are ill: the hospital. This situation has arisen out of a complex matrix of factors related to western European medicine's power over the ages and across continents.

A midwife wraps her kit to go on a call in 1941. Arguments continue over whether home births are safe.

The result is that western European reductionist medical practices have compelled women to give birth under circumstances that are convenient for medical staff but not necessarily conducive or healthy for women. Partly as a response to women's needs for positive birthing experiences, midwifery is experiencing a rebirth. While midwifery is practiced by few women and even fewer men and is therefore accessible to only a few birthing mothers, these numbers are growing. Consumers and midwives have worked to lobby governments to regulate midwifery. Many women have been disillusioned with obstetrical birth. Most birthing mothers seek care which attends to their psychosocial needs. Midwifery has been exceedingly successful at meeting these needs while continuing to maintain high standards of maternal and infant health. Holistic health in general is also experiencing a rebirth, and thus desire for “natural childbirth” has grown, particularly among vocal and active women who have tended to be middle-class, university-educated women of European descent.

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