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Summary

This chapter focuses on the choices that families made about birthing practitioners and where women would deliver. From the eighteenth century, man-midwives dominated the delivery of babies in England. Historians’ accounts have suggested that this incursion was a transformative moment in which men wrestled control of childbirth from women. This chapter shows that because men were so involved in shaping the experience of making babies throughout the seventeenth century, the arrival of men-midwives was not the surprising development represented by other historians. Although birthing chambers in the seventeenth century were almost always female-only, the medical and material preparations for delivery were not at all homosocial. Women gave birth amidst objects that had been procured by female and male family members. The location of the birthing chamber was also often a family one: in the woman’s father’s or father-in-law’s home. Male midwives therefore had a much easier job convincing families to choose them over female practitioners than previous histories have imagined.

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4 - Men, Midwives and a Place to Give Birth

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4 - Men, Midwives and a Place to Give Birth

Summary