Childbirth Methods, Cross-Cultural

The Technocratic Model of Childbirth

Birthing methods began to change globally when the industrial revolution changed the economic and cultural landscape in Europe. In France, males began to take on tasks previously relegated to midwives, inventing tools such as the birthing forceps that allowed them to intervene when they believed a baby was not moving adequately through the birth canal. By the 19th century, most births in Europe were managed by male physicians. Trained physicians as well as expectant women now placed high value on standardization of childbirth procedures. University-educated male physicians, certainly not uneducated women, were considered the authorities on childbirth. Considering that the traditional model of childbirth was dominant for thousands of years, the medical model rapidly displaced it in Europe and, eventually, in many parts of the world. Assumed to be uncivilized and unsafe, the traditional birthing model was replaced by the technocratic model, which grew out of the Enlightenment-a period during which the scientific method was glorified.

[Page 269]The ancient methods of delivering babies were no longer trusted; they were not grounded in science and did not utilize modern technologies. An illustration of this shift in trust is the movement of births from the home to the hospital. The widespread belief was that delivering a baby in a hospital was safer for mother and child-despite the prevalence of deadly germs. When it was discovered that women and infants were dying due to the spread of disease within hospitals, sterilization procedures were developed, but they proved ineffective at first. Maternal morbidity did not decrease at all in many parts of Europe after the industrial revolution. In 1898, maternal death was higher among the middle and upper classes in London than the lower class. The primary difference between these two sets of expectant women was that the middle-and upper-class women delivered in hospitals while the lower-class women delivered their babies in homes under the care of a midwife.

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