Birth Entered Hospitals for Safety Reasons, Right?
- Elaina Burkhart
- Feb 12
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 24
Our society's overall assumption is that birth left the home setting & entered the hospital setting for safety reasons. Through America’s history of continued advancement in medicine & claims made by those with influential power came the belief that birthing in the hospital was an upgrade from giving birth in the home. However, there was a major imbalance in the reality of what the hospital setting provided for women & at this point there’s glaring evidence that it’s taken much away from birthing women.
BIRTH BEGAN LEAVING THE HOME & ENTERING THE HOSPITAL SETTING DUE TO A POWER STRUGGLE & A MANMADE, FALSE PERCEPTION OF SUPERIOR STATUS.
Unfortunately, history has repeatedly followed a pattern of powerful people deciding their way of doing something is superior, and eventually, that way becomes a social norm for the common people over time. Often the new way of doing things is not based on solid evidence. It’s usually about the agenda of those pushing the “new thing” and the benefits someone is gaining from the change. There are many examples of this throughout our history.
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What credentials did ancestral midwives possess?
They didn’t possess credentials or go through structured medical training. Midwives were the result of women observing & supporting women during birth. It is one of the oldest “professions” there is. Women have always supported women in the birth experience. A wise woman who witnessed many births & had older, wiser women mentoring her was considered equipped with valuable skills & knowledge to help support birthing mothers & newborn babies- if support was needed. They followed an apprenticeship model, just like carpenters, hunters, or herbal healers would have done before we held so much value in people having X amount of schooling & a piece of paper to prove their skillset. Midwives specialized in not interrupting the process unless they noticed something was wrong. Though each culture has an extensive midwifery history, I will focus on America’s.
Brief History Lesson - exploring the history of common practices is essential to understanding why we do what we do
Early on, midwives were gladly welcomed in English society & churches provided them with basic living necessities in exchange for their midwifery “services.” During the 1400-1600s, Europe had begun witch hunts which consisted of people accusing & persecuting women (& some men) for life's problems like dying livestock, fires, damaging weather & death- with the claim that these people were working for the devil. Those who practiced herbal medicine & spiritual healing were often accused and sometimes midwives were also blamed for practicing witchcraft when there was an unfavorable outcome for a birthing mom or baby.
The witch hunts made their way into New England colonies during the 1600s. As education & training were becoming more structured with the development of universities, there was also an influx of medically trained doctors from Europe coming to New England. Thankfully, witch hunts ceased in the early 1700s, and the public began to have an increased regard for the professionalization of medicine and formal education, along with a new skepticism for midwifery & alternative medicine.
In the mid-late 1800s, there was an even bigger push for the professionalization of medicine & medical doctors began to take more control of birth. Around this time in the UK, Queen Victoria utilized chloroform during her labor as a form of "anesthesia" with a doctor present. She publicly endorsed the use of it which popularized it for many other women, when previously most were skeptical about the use of anesthesia in labor. Again, someone of higher status paves the way for others to follow their supposed "better way."
"Twilight Sleep" came into play in the early-mid 1900s. This was when laboring women were given morphine & scopolamine as sedation, requiring them to be strapped to beds, heads wrapped in blankets for protection along with "cribs" to contain them as they moaned & flailed, putting themselves & the staff in danger. When the baby was ready to emerge it was pulled out with forceps & often also sedated. This is where the old practice of hanging a baby upside down & slapping their bum came from- they were trying to get a response- now we rub them vigorously with towels instead. The mothers had no recollection of their births. There were still women birthing at home during these times. Often traditional midwives were blamed for maternal and infant deaths, if and when it happened. This was used as a fear-based, influencing tactic to mold the public’s view that midwifery care was inferior & dangerous. News flash, there has always been and always will be a small percentage of deaths during birth. Not to mention, the more we monitor & manipulate birth, the worse our outcomes are.
The U.S. currently has the highest infant & maternal mortality rates out of any other high-income country despite spending the most on healthcare. As home-based maternity care has decreased, mortality rates have increased. That’s a fact, Jack.
Through the early to mid-1900s, holistic (meaning mind-body-spirit) & herbal medicine had been deemed outdated & irrelevant in our society at this point. There was also the disturbing truth that racism & status played a role. As upper & middle-class women started pouring into the hospital, black and poor white women were still birthing at home with black midwives. They were portrayed as dirty & incompetent by the medical community. Laws began to be put into place to outlaw home birth midwifery in some states and some altered the law to make it harder for one to practice legally in our country (requiring certifications, medical training & schooling instead of the traditional apprenticeship model). LOL. I like how I titled this "A brief history lesson."
Due to falsely perceived safety & the prestigious privilege it was to birth in a hospital with a medical doctor present, women moved their way in. In the late 1930s home births attended by midwives dropped to 50% & by 1955 it was less than 1%. Home births make up about 2% of births in the U.S. today.
Midwifery care is still widely popular in other developed countries. Midwives oversee 50% of maternity care in the UK and about ¾ of the populations in Sweden, Denmark & France. Midwifery care in the U.S. makes up less than 10% and only 2% of this care includes home birth midwifery care. Interestingly, those countries that still widely use midwifery care have much better maternal and infant mortality rates. If you’re someone who holds any respect for the World Health Organization (WHO), they say:
Midwives "could avert more than 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths”
So...were there so many women and babies dying during home births attended by midwives that we needed to move this experience into the hospital?
Nope.
Midwives & other holistic, herbal & spiritual healers went through a stent of being accused of witchcraft, which ruined their reputation & dismissed their capabilities & skillset
The exciting developments in medicine & formal education became the standard for health & healing, with purposeful disapproval of anything outside of modern medicine
If you used modern medicine & birthed in the hospital, you were viewed as an upper-class citizen
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With love,
Elaina
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