The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770

by Adrian Wilson

In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female "gossips"; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded both from the delivery and from the subsequent month of lying-in. But in the eighteenth century there emerged a new the "man-midwife" who acted in lieu of a midwife and delivered normal births. By the late eighteenth century, men-midwives had achieved a permanent place in the management of childbirth, especially in the most lucrative spheres of practice. Why did women desert the traditional midwife? How was it that a domain of female control and collective solidarity became instead a region of male medical practice? What had broken down the barrier that had formerly excluded the male practitioner from the management of birth? This confident and authoritative work explores and explains a remarkable transformation--a shift not just in medical practices but in gender relations. Exploring the sociocultural dimensions of childbirth, Wilson argues with great skill that it was not the desires of medical men but the choices of mothers that summoned man-midwifery into being.

Genres: History, Research

239 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1995

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, Adrian Wilson, thank you. This historian of early modern England and New England Patriots linebacker has written a book just for me. Because I have always wondered, "How did male obstetric practice eclipse female midwifery?" and then, there, on the (clearance) shelf, I saw it: The Making of Man-midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770. "Why did women desert the traditional midwife? How was it that a domain of female control became instead a region of male medical practice? Why did a torrent of criticisms directed against 'men-midwives- fall upon deaf ears?" Why? Spoiler: Adrian Wilson posits that the move towards women employing man-midwives came from a split in the collective female culture. As women's literacy doubled and doubled again between 1680 and 1750, and England, London especially became richer and labor more specialized, the new, educated gentlewoman had time for leisure and keeping up the Joneses. Previously, midwives had been the educated leaders in the female community, but with the change in the female upper-class, hiring a man-midwife held a certain cache.

The other part of the story, the one that takes up ninety percent of The Making of Man-midwifery is that professional men of a physic or surgical persuasion became skilled enough at midwifery to attend normal births. Before about 1720, midwives attended nearly all births, and male surgeons were summoned only to emergencies, usually after labor had progressed for four days or so, and craniotomy was needed to save the mother. So men were only called in the direst of emergencies and only delivered a dead child.

This changed with four generations of a family called Chamberlen who possessed secret instruments to effect the delivery of a live child in a difficult birth. Hugh Chamberlen II, the last of his line, sold one of the rumored Chamberlen instruments, the forceps, to a few Tory colleagues. Meanwhile, Dutch physician Hendrik van Deventer developed a theory of midwifery involving pressure on the coccyx and uterine obliquity. In England, Deventerian man-midwives were mostly associated with the Court Whigs. The early man-midwives William Giffard, Sir Richard Manningham, William Smellie, William Hunter: their careers have been plucked out of obscurity and will return there. In three hundred years, if someone mentions in a book that Dr. Hinck practiced at the Minneapolis location of the Bloomington-Lake Clinic until it burned down and he transferred to Edina, will that be interesting? No. The only interesting thing is that two major buildings burned down within a block of each other in slightly over a year. What's going on with that? The Making of Man-Midwifery has filled my head with yet more obscure ideas and useless facts. I can only imagine they might come in handy if I were ever to win free tickets to a Vikings v. Patriots game at the new fucking stadium. I might wait at the exit where the Patriots load onto the team bus until I see Adrian Wilson, and I might say, "Adrian Wilson! Adrian Wilson! Do you think that the late publication of the vectis and its association with Country Whigs might have led to its relative obscurity in obstetric practice?" and Adrian Wilson might be so surprised that someone else was on his wavelength that he would look at me like he had no idea what I was talking about.

A vectis is a shoehorn for baby heads.

http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/20...

[K. G. Whitehurst · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Wilson discusses men-midwives, how they moved from obstetric surgery as part of standard surgical care to actual midwifery, their use or non-use of instruments such as the forceps and the vectis, then Wilson is on sure ground. He demonstrates a progression that was, by no means, assured of male-midwives/accoucheurs coming to dominate the field of obstetrics. I think he's too clear-cut in his determination that midwives were shunted aside even the upper classes; fashionability is an issue here. Wilson, stronger for the first half of the 18th century than the latter, gives a wonderful list of male-midwives for further research, and no, everything does not hang on Smellie and Hunter (tho he doesn't talk too much about anybody but Wm. Hunter in the 1780s). Where I think Wilson is weak in his attempts to connect man-midwives to their politics in the first half of the 18th century; while that was the rage of party era between Tories and Whigs, what the connections mean for male-midwifery are unclear. Furthermore, he attempts to discuss the development of two female cultures and to the connect the creation of one with literacy and leisure (with its attendant effects upon male-midwifery), but he does so in only a chapter, which cannot and does not do the subject justice. It seems more than a bit tacked on. (One thing to keep in mind--this book is 30 years old, so its greatest usage, besides as direction for further study of the actual male midwives, is as historiography.)

[Hannah Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing topic, fascinating information and compelling analysis. The writing is surprisingly engaging for the topic (but don't expect Mary Roach or Steven Johnson science writing). Organization was a little questionable though, and the central thesis got a little lost in the crossfire with a poor attempt at conclusion.

[Ellie Monks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, comprehensive look at how the ground was laid for the men-midwives of the 18th century and as such the more medicalised way we treat childbirth in the 21st century.