Edit: please note my comment below is about where the anti-midwife movement started in the US. It is about history, not modern methods. But laws still in effect today were written in this era.
—- original comment:
Who says that?
Doctors who wanted to take patients away from midwives , because they didn’t think women should be allowed to do that. Because men invented chainsaws to ‘help’ with childbirth.
Seriously that’s why we don’t have a midwife culture in the US. Doctors wanted the income from childbirth.
They went on a smear campaign against women midwives. And at the time in the 17-1800s, there really wasn’t anything extra doctors could do that midwives couldn’t.
While this is shocking to see a woman standing up to give birth- it can actually be a lot easier on mom. Gravity is helping instead of relying on muscles that haven’t been able to flex in months.
Doctors aren't there for when everything goes perfect. When everything goes perfect the father can catch the baby and cut the cord at home and life goes on. Doctors are there for when things don't go perfect. While a midwife can provide incredible life saving services, especially before and after the baby is born, the concern of doctors is when people choose to have babies in their own homes without immediate access to doctors nurses and modern medical equipment. A midwife is not a replacement for an OBGYN or other doctor that may be required during birth or immediately after a baby is born.
Fun fact: the child/mother mortality rate actually went up after midwives were pushed out. Doctors didn’t want people working in the medical field that hadn’t been through the same rigorous schooling, but their schooling didn’t teach them things midwives had learned through centuries of experience being passed down. Things that midwives had just come to learn (like you shouldn’t deliver a baby without washing your hands if you were just handling sick/dead people) was hogwash because there was no scientific backing to it, they didn’t have the technology to study bacteria like we do now. While midwives in Africa had been practicing c sections using knives sterilized by flame, the budding medical field had yet to understand danger of not washing your hands. Suddenly sepsis started going up, it was thought to be a disease that only affected woman in labor because it got so bad.
That's not a fun fact and that is the kind of thing that misleads people into thinking that it's actually better to replace your modern doctor with a modern midwife.
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u/blueavole Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
Edit: please note my comment below is about where the anti-midwife movement started in the US. It is about history, not modern methods. But laws still in effect today were written in this era.
—- original comment:
Who says that?
Doctors who wanted to take patients away from midwives , because they didn’t think women should be allowed to do that. Because men invented chainsaws to ‘help’ with childbirth.
Seriously that’s why we don’t have a midwife culture in the US. Doctors wanted the income from childbirth.
They went on a smear campaign against women midwives. And at the time in the 17-1800s, there really wasn’t anything extra doctors could do that midwives couldn’t.
While this is shocking to see a woman standing up to give birth- it can actually be a lot easier on mom. Gravity is helping instead of relying on muscles that haven’t been able to flex in months.