Modern Midwifery 1925 – Specialists in Maternal and Infant Care

The midwife Nancy Sullivan says: 

“In ancient times and primitive societies, midwifery had both a technical or manual aspect and a magical or mystical aspect. Midwives were therefore sometimes respected, sometimes feared, sometimes regarded as community leaders, and sometimes tortured and killed.” 

The hospital chaplain Karen Hanson also says: 

“Midwives (the vast majority of them women) were among those condemned and regarded with suspicion as witches because they mediated birth, illness and death.” 

The use of midwives declined dramatically in the late Middle Ages and during the European Renaissance, amid fears of witchcraft and an increasing number of surgeons.

Today, midwifery is a profession that provides care to women during pregnancy and childbirth in healthcare settings and teaches them about breastfeeding and infant care. In the United States, Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNMs) have specialized training in both nursing and midwifery. Midwives practice in hospitals and homes and refer pregnant women to obstetricians when additional care is needed.

In 1925, after training in England, the American nurse-midwife Mary Breckinridge introduced midwifery to the United States and founded the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies, which soon became the Frontier Nursing Service. In its first few years, death rates among mothers and babies in eastern Kentucky were significantly lower than in the rest of America. In 1939, Breckinridge led the opening of the first nurse-midwifery school in the United States.

Chaplain Hanson says: “The decline of the midwife and other public-health practitioners in America was a by-product of the rise of medicine and physicians as society's official healthcare experts. In the 19th century, midwifery was a neighborly service, while doctors made 'healing' a source of income in its own right.”

In 1900, midwives attended half of all babies born in the United States, but by 1939 they attended only 15% of births.

About the Article Image: Birth of Esau and Jacob, illustrated by Francois Maitre (1475) for St. Augustine's La cite de Dieu 

Historical Figures Mentioned in the Article: Mary Breckinridge (1881–1965) 

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