Overview

"By the mid-twentieth century, two things appeared destined for extinction in the United States: the practice of home birth and the profession of midwifery. In 1940, close to half of all U.S. births took place in the hospital, and the trend was increasing. By 1970, the percentage of hospital births reached an all-time high of 99.4%, and the obstetrician, rather than the midwife, assumed nearly complete control over what had become an entirely medicalized procedure. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an explosion of new alternative organizations, publications, and conferences cropped up, documenting a very different demographic trend; by 1977, the percentage of out-of-hospital births had more than doubled. Home birth was making a comeback, but why? The executive director of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists publicly noted in 1977 the ""rising tide of demand for home delivery,"" describing it as an ""anti-intellectual-anti-science revolt."" A quiet revolution spread across cities and suburbs, towns and farms, as individuals challenged legal, institutional and medical protocols by choosing unlicensed midwives to catch their babies at home. Coming Home analyzes the ideas, values, and experiences that led to this quiet revolution and its long-term consequences for our understanding of birth, medicine, and culture. Who were these self-proclaimed midwives and how did they learn their trade? Because the United States had virtually eliminated midwifery in most areas by the mid-twentieth century, most of them had little knowledge of or exposure to the historic practice, drawing primarily on obstetrical texts, trial and error, and sometimes instruction from aging home birth physicians to learn their craft. While their constituents were primarily drawn from the educated white middle class, their model of care (which ultimately drew on the wisdom and practice of a more diverse, global pool of midwives) had the potential to transform birth practices for all women, both in and out of the hospital."

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9780190232542

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Reviews

This is a magnificent and nuanced history of home birth and midwifery over the past half century. Kline not only depicts with great care and precision just how resistance to unnecessarily medicalized birth developed in communities across the United States, she traces the development of a complex social movement that continues to have an impact on public policies that affect birthing experiences in all settings. The personal narratives of so many extraordinary midwives will certainly inspire generations of younger people who will be following in their footsteps. --Judy Norsigian and Jane Pincus, co-authors and co-founders of Our Bodies Ourselves Wendy Kline provides a valuable and much-needed contribution to the social and medical history of childbirth in America. The vivid and moving stories of midwives and home births leap off the pages as Kline takes us from Chicago to California to Washington, DC, Tennessee, Texas, and Seattle. She compellingly analyzes and explains why some women came to prefer midwife-attended home births over physician-attended hospital deliveries. This well-written book about twentieth century women's home-delivery experiences is exceptionally readable and historically meaningful and important. --Judith Walzer Leavitt, author of Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 In Coming Home, Wendy Kline weaves a series of individual stories into a compelling narrative of the home birth movement in the United States in the past century and places into context a long neglected chapter of American medical history. --Eugene Declercq, Founder, Birth by the Numbers website The profession of midwifery was deliberately and systematically obliterated by jealous physicians at the turn of the twentieth century. Kline's dogged research chronicles the rebirth of our hallowed profession in the 1970-80s. --Carol Leonard, co-founder of the Midwives Alliance of North America

Author Information

Wendy Kline is professor and Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine in the Department of History at Purdue University. She is the author of Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom and Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave.

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