Brought to Bed : Childbearing in America, 1750-1950
Editorial Reviews
Book 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.
Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 ,Judith Walzer Leavitt,Oxford University Press, USA,0195056906,18th century,19th century,20th century,Anthropology - Cultural,Family / Parenting / Childbirth,General,History,History: American,Obstetrics,Pregnancy & Childbirth,Social Science,Sociology,United States,Women's Studies - History,History / United States / General,History, American | Women
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