Midwifery is the health science and health profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period, in addition to the sexual and reproductive health of women throughout their lives. In many countries, midwifery is a medical profession. A professional in midwifery is known as a midwife.
A home birth is a birth that takes place in a residence rather than in a hospital or a birthing center. They may be attended by a midwife, or lay attendant with experience in managing home births. Home birth was, until the advent of modern medicine, the de facto method of delivery. The term was coined in the middle of the 19th century as births began to take place in hospitals.
Natural childbirth is childbirth without routine medical interventions, particularly anesthesia. Natural childbirth arose in opposition to the techno-medical model of childbirth that has recently gained popularity in industrialized societies. Natural childbirth attempts to minimize medical intervention, particularly the use of anesthetic medications and surgical interventions such as episiotomies, forceps and ventouse deliveries and caesarean sections. Natural childbirth may occur during a physician or midwife attended hospital birth, a midwife attended homebirth, or an unassisted birth. The term "natural childbirth" was coined by obstetrician Grantly Dick-Read upon publication of his book Natural Childbirth in the 1930s, which was followed by the 1942 Childbirth Without Fear.
Marianne Mithun is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 1986.
Sheila Helena Elizabeth Kitzinger MBE was a British natural childbirth activist and author on childbirth and pregnancy. She wrote more than 20 books and had a worldwide reputation as a passionate and committed advocate for change.
Feminist anthropology is a four-field approach to anthropology that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from feminist theory. Simultaneously, feminist anthropology challenges essentialist feminist theories developed in Europe and America. While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception, it was not until the 1970s that feminist anthropology was formally recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since then, it has developed its own subsection of the American Anthropological Association – the Association for Feminist Anthropology – and its own publication, Feminist Anthropology. Their former journal Voices is now defunct.
Childbirth Connection, formerly known as the Maternity Center Association, is an American national nonprofit organization that works to improve the quality of maternity care through research, education, advocacy, and policy. Childbirth Connection promotes safe, effective evidence-based maternity care and is a voice for the interests of childbearing women and families.
A Pinard horn is a type of stethoscope used to listen to the heart rate of a fetus during pregnancy. It is a hollow horn, often made of wood or metal, about 8 inches (200 mm) long. It functions similarly to an ear trumpet by amplifying sound. The user holds the wide end of the horn against the pregnant woman's abdomen, and listens through the other end.
Carolyn Sargent is an American medical anthropologist who is Professor Emerita of Sociocultural Anthropology and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Sargent was the director of women's studies at Southern Methodist University from 2000-2008. Sargent served as president of the Society for Medical Anthropology for 2008-2010 and 2011-2012.
Frederica ("Freddy") Annis Lopez de Leo de Laguna was an American ethnologist, anthropologist, and archaeologist influential for her work on Paleoindian and Alaska Native art and archaeology in the American northwest and Alaska.
Marsden Wagner, was a perinatologist and perinatal epidemiologist from California who served as a Director of Maternal and Child Health for the California State Health Department, Director of the University of Copenhagen-UCLA Health Research Center, and Director of Women's and Children's Health for the World Health Organization. He was an outspoken supporter of midwifery.
Suzanne Arms is an American writer. She has published seven books on childbirth and child care.
VictoriaReiflerBricker is an American anthropologist, ethnographer and linguist, widely known for her ground-breaking studies of contemporary and historical Maya culture.
Rayna Rapp is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and foreword-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and has been praised for providing "invaluable insights into the first generation of women who had to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancies on the basis of amniocentesis result". She co-authored many articles with Faye Ginsburg, including Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship, a topic the pair has continued to research.
Birth as an American Rite of Passage is a book written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published in 1992. It combines anthropology and first-hand accounts from mothers and doctors into a critical analysis of childbirth in America from a feminist perspective.
Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives is a collection of anthropological essays that study birth and authoritative knowledge across sixteen different cultures that was first published in 1998 in the Journal of Gender Studies. It "extends and enriches" anthropologist Brigitte Jordan's work in the anthropology of birth. In 2003, it won the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction book award.
Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States is an anthropological study of childbirth by Brigitte Jordan published in 1978.
Robbie Davis-Floyd is an American cultural, medical, and reproductive anthropologist, researcher, author, and international speaker primarily known for her research on childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics. She chose to study women's birth experiences due to her own birth experiences and espouses the viewpoint that midwives play an important role in safeguarding positive outcomes for women giving birth. Beginning in 1983, she has given over 1000 presentations at universities and childbirth, midwifery, and obstetric conferences around the world.
Khiara M. Bridges is an American law professor and anthropologist specializing in the intersectionality of race, reproductive justice, and law. She is best known for her book, Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization, in which she argues that race and class largely affect the prenatal, childbirth, and postnatal experiences of women.
Elizabeth Davis is an author, women's health care specialist, educator, consultant, and Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). She is a resident of Sebastopol, California and a mother of three children. Since 1977, Davis has pioneered a professional path for midwives in the United States while educating women around the world. Davis is globally active as an expert on midwifery and reproductive health issues. She has been involved with midwifery education, legalization, and the battle for professional autonomy. She lectures on reproductive rights, sexuality, and healing birth trauma.
