TY - BOOK ID - 74395525 TI - Brought to bed : childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 PY - 1986 SN - 0195038436 0195056906 9780195056907 9780195038439 1423736389 9781423736387 019028160X 9786610523696 1601297211 1280523697 0198020910 PB - New York : Oxford University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Childbirth KW - Obstetrics KW - Accouchement KW - Obstétrique KW - History KW - Histoire KW - Birth KW - Birthing KW - Child birth KW - Live birth KW - Parturition KW - Labor (Obstetrics) KW - Maternal-fetal medicine KW - Medicine KW - Delivery, Obstetric KW - Labor, Obstetric KW - Obstetric Labor KW - Obstetric Delivery KW - Deliveries, Obstetric KW - Obstetric Deliveries KW - Labor Presentation KW - Trial of Labor KW - history KW - United States. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:74395525 AB - Based on personal accounts by birthing women and their medical attendants, Brought to Bed reveals how childbirth has changed from colonial times to the present. Judith Walzer Leavitt's study focuses on the traditional woman-centered home-birthing practices, their replacement by male doctors, and the movement from the home to the hospital. She explains that childbearing women and their physicians gradually changed birth places because they believed the increased medicalization would make giving birth safer and more comfortable. Ironically, because of infection, infant and maternal mortality did not immediately decline. She concludes that birthing women held considerable power in determining labor and delivery events as long as childbirth remained in the home. The move to the hospital in the twentieth century gave the medical profession the upper hand. Leavitt also discusses recent events in American obstetrics that illustrate how women have attempted to retrieve some of the traditional women--and family--centered aspects of childbirth. ER -