MIDWIVES

MIDWIVES. Almost every baby born in early modern Europe was delivered by a midwife. Childbirth was a female ritual into which men entered only in emergencies. An expectant mother invited female friends, relatives, and neighbors to attend her in childbirth. During the long hours of labor, these "gossips" supported the mother emotionally and physically, propping her up as directed by the midwife. They prayed and prepared special foods, kept the fire stoked, and performed all other necessary tasks. Historians have pointed out, however, that single or poor women may have experienced the attendance of gossips as discipline rather than encouragement. In the eighteenth century some well-to-do women began to choose male midwives, but such remained a minute fraction of all births.

Midwives ranged greatly in training, styles of practice, and expertise. Some women delivered a few babies based upon their experiences as gossips, never considering midwifery as their primary roles. Others were very skilled. Sarah Stone (c. 1730), for example, a midwife who practiced in the west of England in the early eighteenth century, functioned as a consultant midwife. She was called into a number of births when a midwife was having trouble, and her complaints about the ignorance of country midwives sound much like those of some of her male surgical colleagues.

The regulation of midwifery varied considerably across Europe. Informally all midwives were regulated by local reputation. Louise Bourgeois (1564–1636), midwife to the queen of France in the early seventeenth century, counseled her midwife daughter never to permit women to deliver in her home lest people think she was encouraging vice by allowing unwed mothers to give birth clandestinely. In England, where midwifery practice was only lightly regulated, a midwife might choose to take out a bishop's license. To obtain such she needed testimony from local respectable matrons about her skills and moral worth. Midwives' religious practices were closely policed. If a baby were born who might not survive, the midwife was often empowered to perform an emergency baptism. Many men feared the magical connotations of reproduction and childbirth, and midwives were sometimes thought to provide abortifacients and to practice magic, another reason for governing midwives' orthodoxy.

Civic authorities were also keen to regulate midwives, since midwives provided evidence in cases of rape or suspicious pregnancy and asked unwed mothers in labor about the identities of the fathers. In 1452 the German city of Regensburg set up the first system of municipal regulation of midwives. These women had to satisfy the authorities about their religious orthodoxy and pass an exam set by a panel of physicians, surgeons, and midwives. It was assumed by the authorities that these women were literate and skilled.

The history of midwifery has echoed other concerns. Early histories of midwifery, often written by obstetricians, discussed the bad old days before the advent of the modern specialty and portrayed midwives as ignorant and superstitious. Women's historians have begun to consider a more balanced view of midwives, outlining their variety and integrating their practices into larger frameworks of gender relations and women's work.

MIDWIVES

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