Laboring On Birth in Transition in the United States [Hardcover]

Facing the polar forces of an epidemic of Cesarean sections and epidurals and home-like labor rooms, American birth is in transition. Caught between the most extreme medicalization  best seen in a Cesarean section rate of nearly 30 percent  and a rhetoric of womens choices and the natural, women and their midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and nurses labor on. Laboring Onoffers the voices of all of these practitioners, all women trying to help women, as they struggle with this increasingly split vision of birth.

Updating Barbara Katz Rothman's now-classic In Labor, the first feminist sociological analysis of birth in the United States, Laboring Ongives a comprehensive picture of the ever-changing American birth practices and often conflicting visions of birth practitioners. The authors deftly weave compelling accounts of birth work, by midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and nurses, into the larger sociohistorical context of health care practices and activism and offer provocative arguments about the current state of affairs and the future of birth in America.

I. Laboring in Transition 1. Laboring Then: The Political History of Maternity Care in the United States 2. Laboring Now: Current Cultural Constructions of Pregnancy, Birth, and Mothering II. Midwives in Transition 3. Becoming a Midwife: Varieties of Inspiration 4. Birth Matters: Practicing Midwifery III. Disorganized Labor 5. Women in White: Obstetricians and Labor and Delivery Nurses 6. The New Arrival: Labor Doulas and the Fragmentation of Midwifery and Caregiving

Anyone who wants to understand why U.S. women have for so long put up with one of the worst maternity care systems in the world needs to read Laboring On. Today's doulas should read it for ideas of the full potential of their movement. The authors' collaboration gives the book a wonderful and fascinating depth.

Ina Maylã}