Includes bibliographical references and index

From hospital to home -- Back to bed : from hospital to home obstetrics in the city of Chicago -- Middle-class midwifery : transforming birth practices in suburban Washington, DC -- Psychedelic birth : the emergence of the hippie midwife -- The Bowland bust : medicine and the law in Santa Cruz, California -- From El Paso to Lexington : the formation of the Midwives Alliance of North America -- From professionalization to education : the creation of the Seattle Midwifery School -- Epilogue : in search of common ground

Available to OhioLINK libraries

"By the mid-twentieth century, two things appeared destined for extinction in the United States: the practice of home birth and the profession of midwifery. In 1940, close to half of all U.S. births took place in the hospital, and the trend was increasing. By 1970, the percentage of hospital births reached an all-time high of 99.4%, and the obstetrician, rather than the midwife, assumed nearly complete control over what had become an entirely medicalized procedure. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an explosion of new alternative organizations, publications, and conferences cropped up, documenting a very different demographic trend; by 1977, the percentage of out-of-hospital births had more than doubled. The executive director of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists publicly noted in 1977 the "rising tide of demand for home delivery," describing it as an "anti-intellectual-anti-science revolt." A quiet revolution spread across cities and suburbs, towns and farms, as individuals challenged legal, institutional and medical protocols by choosing unlicensed midwives to catch their babies at home. Coming Home analyzes the ideas, values, and experiences that led to this quiet revolution and its long-term consequences for our understanding of birth, medicine, and culture"--