A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome

by Tara Lynn Mulder

A bold new history of women's health, brought to life through ancient women's stories of pregnancy and birth.

In the well-trod history of the Roman Empire, a pivotal moment has long gone It was in ancient Rome that medical men first set their sights on childbirth, the traditional domain of female midwives.

Taking us to the dawn of Western obstetrics, A Womb of One's Own offers a feminist account of how, against a long tradition of midwifery, male doctors began claiming authority in reproductive matters, with an emphasis on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. Their intrusion paved the way for the later criminalization of midwives and the cloaking of childbirth in secrecy and shame.

Yet communities of Roman women continued to help each other through the journey from preconception to postpartum, guided by their own experience and the expertise of midwives. Tara Mulder recovers stories of ancient women living and resisting as they sought autonomy over their bodies and their health. Recounting their experiences in vivid, intimate detail, she reveals how old our modern conflicts about birth truly are.

371 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 5, 2026

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tore through this fascinating book. I learned a lot, and it was a fun read. I especially loved the way it explored community support and the importance of surrounding a birthing person with attentive helpers. I think it’s easy to look back at rituals that seem ridiculous now, like using amulets and fumigations, and say that ancient midwives were just superstitious. But I appreciated how the book explored how those rituals were helpful, if only because they provided a birthing person with a group of supporters paying close attention to their body and responding to its cues.

[Bungaku Shoujo · Rating 3 out of 5]

In classics, there’s been a move towards what I’ll call “the emotive turn”, which seeks to restore humanity to usually marginalized and distant subjects. This is often accomplished via the conceptual framework of agency and a close personal connection between the scholar and the subject. Many books indebted to this new way of thinking are about family and birth, and this book, the introduction of which contains a paragraph where the author compares herself to all other women who have given birth, is part of it.

The book is not concerned solely with the moment of childbirth, expanding its focus to related subjects like pregnancy care, contraceptives, abortion, early infancy, and even one part about ancient physicians’ theories on whether women could survive without the womb (they correctly believed they could, though apparently there’s no evidence hysterectomies were ever actually performed in the classical world). With the aim to focus on women’s experiences, a variety of evidence is laid out, from literary texts to tombstones. As is common in “emotive turn” influenced literature, Mulder approaches her subjects with great empathy– so much empathy that she even finds non-misogynistic origins for the wandering womb, and almost certainly overstates the case by claiming that infanticide was “quite rare”. While Mulder never allows the book to get sappy, there are some problems with trying to get into the heads of women we know very little about. Therefore, accessible but still academic text exists in the same chapter as extended fanfiction of “pompous” Galen consulting three fictitious women, or the imagined adventures of the midwife Scribonia Attice, known only through her tombstone. This latter scene was particularly jarring because Scribonia Attice’s slave is all caught up on twenty-first century academic linguistic conventions, and so refers to herself as being “enslaved to” her mistress. Thankfully, these scenes are rare, and the evidence is either discussed with more plausible speculation or allowed to stand on its own; I found the epigraphical and archaeological evidence to be the most evocative, with one piece that I found particularly notable being the slave Elpis’ somewhat shoddily made memorial to her three dead children. As this shows, Mulder is attentive to women of all statuses, and especially to the fact that many of them wouldn’t have been able to follow doctors’ advice (though I feel saying they didn’t have the time to go on leisurely walks is too cynical).

Although Mulder was inspired to write the book to show that birth wasn’t a wholly negative experience in antiquity, it has a pessimistic running claim that, while initially based on respectful integration, male medical practitioners increasingly medicalized birth to the detriment of midwives and their patients, as their knowledge was more theoretical than practical. This thesis is interesting, and Mulder does not push it farther than what the evidence can support, noting that the worst effects of this shift took place in more recent history; some of her own evidence shows how common practice did not always align with official advice, even when that advice was actually beneficial to women. It’s difficult, of course, to believe that her experience as a homebirth midwife had no influence at all on her critique of childbirth’s medicalization, but I found her perspective had more bearing on language. Mulder frequently uses the controversial term “birthing people” and its relatives, and while she generally restricts this to modernity, it sometimes slips into the ancient sections. One of the first sentences of the book is one stating that ancient Rome was “incredibly hostile to birthing people”, and whether this is meant to refer to women in general or just women in labor is unclear. While the use of “pregnant people” and other de-sexed terms weren’t as confusing, they still distorted the specific Roman historical context, despite Mulder’s emphasis on how we should try to understand them; the Roman world was profoundly sexed, and it makes little sense to pretend otherwise, lest we risk making statements like “in ancient Rome, people were believed to be inferior to people, and thus couldn’t vote, hold political office, join the military, or alienate valuable property without the approval of a person”. Similarly, Mulder refers to Rome as a “pronatalist” society several times, which is technically true, but also meaningless, since every state in history has officially promoted reproduction, even if the actual birth rate is very low (like modern South Korea).

Ultimately, while evidently influenced by modern debates, this is an in-depth and informative book on one of the most important experiences of Roman women’s lives.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the topic was certainly fascinating, my main problem was the chosen organization of the book by topic. Considering the length of time the Roman Empire covered, I often found myself getting turned around and confused about what changes happened when and with what other changes as covered in the seperate chapters. I think a chronological order would have made a lot more sense as a major point of discussion was how childbirth changed over time in the Ancient world. Additionally, while Mulder did mention a few times that there was the possiblity of different parts of the Empire having different insert-topic-here, due to the massive geographic sprawl of the Roman Empire at its various points in history, I think this probably deserved more consideration. All in all, I found the execution to be less organized then I'd like it to be and I think it fell short largely due to that.

[Maxine]

As much as I am interested in the intersection between childbirth and history, this book wasn't for me.

Mostly because of where the author made up missing details to fit her bias (which is her right, and she was open about doing so, and I respect her choices), and because of where she focused on the written record due to actual lost accounts. Papering over that lack with unfavorable judgement on what's there doesn't lend credence to her goal. At least not for this reader.

I wouldn't recommend this book, and I'd be cautious of the author in the future.