For many women, the more they learn about hospital birth the more likely they are to opt for home birth. They prefer the idea of having their deliveries attended, not in a clinical setting surrounded by five or six strangers and a confusing array of electronic instrumentation, but in a setting of quiet support, surrounded by the father, a midwife, and minimal medical apparatus. What is important about making the choice, however, is to make it on a fully informed basis.
Home birth is the term assigned to the belief that "all parents should have a choice concerning were their children are born" (Brooks, 1976, p. 143). That choice may involve delivery in the parents' actual home or in a so-called birth center designed for the purpose, which is to be specifically distinguished from the traditional hospital clinical setting, with its myriad disruptions and institutional protocols (Stewart, 1998g).
A home birth presumes that pregnancy and childbirth are naturally occurring conditions and, moreover, that there are no known or even hinted-at obstetrical complications or abnormalities that require specialized medical care at the time of delivery (Brook, 1976). What it does not presume is that a normal pregnancy is an illness that is meant to be cured. That being so, home birth or delivery at a birthing center offers parents access -- but not subjection -- to trained staff as needed (Dick-Read, 1985). Accordingly, obstetricians are routinely excluded from home births, with mothers being attended by midwives. Now midwives are required to be licensed in every state, and midwifery is a nursing-practitioner specialty (Stewart, 1998c). Some few obstetricians have also included home birth as part of their practice. But in the words of one such practitioner: "Birth is a family affair, and the doctor should assist a family in this milestone event rather than dictate the terms of the occasion" (Brew, 1976, p. 35). In short, home birth privileges t...