- Title Pages
- Preface
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Appendix Tables
- Introduction
- 1 The Measurement of Maternal Mortality
- 2 Problems of Measuring Maternal Mortality
- 3 The Determinants of Maternal Mortality
- 4 Puerperal Fever
- 5 Toxaemia of Pregnancy and Eclampsia
- 6 Obstetric Haemorrhage
- 7 Abortion
- 8 Other Causes of Maternal Mortality
- 9 The Importance of International Comparisons
- 10 Maternal Mortality in Pre-Registration England
- 11 The Eighteenth Century and the Origins of Man-Midwifery
- 12 Maternal Care in Nineteenth-Century Britain
- 13 Maternal Care in Britain, 1900–1935
- 14 Maternal Mortality in Britain from 1850 to the Mid-1930s
- 15 Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality in Britain, 1935–1950
- 16 The Geography and Politics of Maternal Care in the USA: Introduction
- 17 Home Deliveries and the General Practitioner
- 18 The American Midwife
- 19 The American Lying-in Hospital, 1850–1910
- 20 Attitudes to Childbirth and the Problem of Pain
- 21 The Orgy of Interference
- 22 Maternal Mortality in the USA
- 23 Europe: Introduction
- 24 European Midwives
- 25 European Lying-in Hospitals and Obstetricians
- 26 Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality in Selected European Countries
- 27 Australia and New Zealand
- 28 Maternal and Infant Mortality
- Appendix 1 Hidden Maternal Deaths
- Appendix 2 England and Wales: The Classification of Maternal Deaths
- Appendix 3 Reports on Maternal Mortality in the USA
- appendix 4 Numbers of Births and Statistical Significance
- Appendix 5 The Problem of Streptococcal Virulence
- Appendix 6 Tables
- Select Bibliography
- Index
The American Midwife
The American Midwife
- Chapter:
- (p.298) 18 The American Midwife
- Source:
- Death in Childbirth
- Author(s):
Irvine Loudon
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter discusses the history of American midwives during the early 20th century. American midwives were so diverse socially and professionally that they are difficult to define and impossible to quantify for the country as a whole. During the early 1900s, there were four different types of midwives in the US They were the immigrant midwives, the rural ‘neighbour-midwives’, black midwives of the southern states, and the fully trained midwives. They provided 50 percent of total deliveries in 1900, but in 1935 this figured dropped to 12.5 percent. The decline in the number of midwives was most marked in the north and west and by 1930 more than 80 percent of the midwives were confined to the southern states.
Keywords: midwives, U.S, home birth, obstetrics, southern states
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
- Title Pages
- Preface
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Appendix Tables
- Introduction
- 1 The Measurement of Maternal Mortality
- 2 Problems of Measuring Maternal Mortality
- 3 The Determinants of Maternal Mortality
- 4 Puerperal Fever
- 5 Toxaemia of Pregnancy and Eclampsia
- 6 Obstetric Haemorrhage
- 7 Abortion
- 8 Other Causes of Maternal Mortality
- 9 The Importance of International Comparisons
- 10 Maternal Mortality in Pre-Registration England
- 11 The Eighteenth Century and the Origins of Man-Midwifery
- 12 Maternal Care in Nineteenth-Century Britain
- 13 Maternal Care in Britain, 1900–1935
- 14 Maternal Mortality in Britain from 1850 to the Mid-1930s
- 15 Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality in Britain, 1935–1950
- 16 The Geography and Politics of Maternal Care in the USA: Introduction
- 17 Home Deliveries and the General Practitioner
- 18 The American Midwife
- 19 The American Lying-in Hospital, 1850–1910
- 20 Attitudes to Childbirth and the Problem of Pain
- 21 The Orgy of Interference
- 22 Maternal Mortality in the USA
- 23 Europe: Introduction
- 24 European Midwives
- 25 European Lying-in Hospitals and Obstetricians
- 26 Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality in Selected European Countries
- 27 Australia and New Zealand
- 28 Maternal and Infant Mortality
- Appendix 1 Hidden Maternal Deaths
- Appendix 2 England and Wales: The Classification of Maternal Deaths
- Appendix 3 Reports on Maternal Mortality in the USA
- appendix 4 Numbers of Births and Statistical Significance
- Appendix 5 The Problem of Streptococcal Virulence
- Appendix 6 Tables
- Select Bibliography
- Index
