Brought to bed : childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950

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. Table of Contents......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1 "Under the Shadow of Maternity": Childbirth and Women's Lives in America......Page 26 2 "Science" Enters the Birthing Room: The Impact of Physician Obstetrics......Page 49 3 "Overcivilization and Maternity": Differences in Women's Childbirth Experiences......Page 77 4 "Only a Woman Can Know": The Role of Gender in the Birthing Room......Page 100 5 "The Greatest Blessing of This Age": Pain Relief in Obstetrics......Page 129 6 Why Women Suffer So: Meddlesome Midwifery and Scrupulous Cleanliness......Page 155 7 "Alone Among Strangers": Birth Moves to the Hospital......Page 184 8 Decision-Making and the Process of Change......Page 209 Epilogue......Page 226 Notes......Page 232 Chronology of Events in Childbirth History......Page 276 A......Page 284 F......Page 285 M......Page 286 P......Page 287 U......Page 288 V......Page 289 B......Page 290 D......Page 291 G......Page 292 K......Page 293 O......Page 294 S......Page 295 W......Page 296 Z......Page 297 Traces the change from home to hospital childbirth, explains what benefits hospital care was supposed to provide, and discusses why home births are becoming more popular again