The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770.

TLDR

In seventeenth‑century England, childbirth was a female domain, but by the late eighteenth century man‑midwives had secured a permanent, lucrative role, replacing traditional midwives. The study investigates why women abandoned traditional midwives and how a female‑controlled sphere became dominated by male medical practice, exploring the transformation of gender relations in childbirth. Wilson examines sociocultural factors and argues that mothers’ choices, rather than medical men’s desires, prompted the rise of man‑midwifery. The work concludes that mothers’ preferences broke the male exclusion barrier, leading to a shift in both medical practice and gender dynamics during childbirth.

Abstract

In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female gossips; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded both from the delivery and from the subsequent month of lying-in.But in the eighteenth century there emerged a new practitioner: the man-midwife who acted in lieu of a midwife and delivered normal births. By the late eighteenth century, men-midwives had achieved a permanent place in the management of childbirth, especially in the most lucrative spheres of practice.Why did women desert the traditional midwife? How was it that a domain of female control and collective solidarity became instead a region of male medical practice? What had broken down the barrier that had formerly excluded the male practitioner from the management of birth?This confident and authoritative work explores and explains a remarkable transformation--a shift not just in medical practices but in gender relations. Exploring the sociocultural dimensions of childbirth, Wilson argues with great skill that it was not the desires of medical men but the choices of mothers that summoned man-midwifery into being.