MIDWIFERY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: PEOPLE POLITICS, PAYMENT, PROFESSIONALISM, AND POLICY
As women gave birth, they sought and received care from supportive others. At an unknown point in the cultural evolution, some experienced women became designated as the wise women to be in attendance at birth. Thus, the profession of midwifery began. Indeed, as historians have noted, midwifery has been characterized as a social role throughout recorded history, regardless of culture or time.
Each country has its own unique history of midwifery and how the profession was established. The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of midwifery in the United States which was first established as a profession in the early 1920s. The paper focuses on the people important to the practice, policies and payments associated with the practice, the establishment and growth of the practice as a profession, and the various political issues attendant to the practice down through the century.
In the United States, midwives have been attending births in America since its colonization. By the year 1900, 95 percent of births occurred at home with most being delivered by midwives or doctors with attending midwives (Rooks, 1999). However, during the first decade of the century, several sociopolitical shifts were underway. The Wright brothers invented the airplane, millions of immigrants were pouring into America, a crisis occurred in hospital financing bringing about new policies and increased contributions from patients, more and more doctors were being educated and being better compensated, the railroads were expanding their employee medical programs, people involved in public health were increasingly emphasizing education in personal hygiene and the use of the physician as a force in prevention by organizing medical examination of the entire population; further, socialists, as a political party, moved to endorse health insurance (Borst, 1996)). Th...