Customer Reviews

Birth Chairs, Midwives, and Medicine

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You hardly expect that a type of furniture would tell direct stories about medical history and the relationship between the sexes and between doctors and patients through the ages. However, in a surprising book _Birth Chairs, Midwives, and Medicine_ (University Press of Mississippi) by Amanda Carson Banks, we get quite a lesson in history and medical sociology. Some of the lessons don't reflect well on medical practitioners or on societal choice at all.

This well-illustrated book shows birth chairs and stools from many cultures and times. They were low, about ten or thirteen inches, and they had a more or less straight back. They had the simple job of supporting the woman in a squat, a position that allowed her to brace her feet against the ground and that allowed gravity to help. They had a very narrow seat, or a seat that had a horseshoe-shaped cut out, to allow the midwife access to the birth canal and delivery. They came in many styles, because they were generally made or ordered by the midwives that owned them.

Because of the rise of the profession of medicine, and because obstetrics was a source of professional endeavor and income, chairs changed. The seats became higher, allowing the doctor an easier view and more room for manipulation. The attitude seemed to be that midwives could put up with back strain, but doctors wouldn't; it didn't matter that the position of squatting was eliminated, so that the woman could do less to brace herself during contractions. The chairs also became more gadget-ridden, with adjustable backs, seats, arms, and stirrups. The doctor would probably adjust these to his convenience. The innovations of gadgets on what were formerly simple stools started to include chair backs that could descend to the horizontal, making the lithotomy position an option. Increasingly, birth chairs became more like operating tables, and the role of the woman centrally involved became less important than the duties of those conducting the delivery. Birth chairs came into fashion again with the rise of the women's rights movement, but doctors only grudgingly accepted them.

This is a lot of medical history for the lowly birth chair to bear, but Banks has written a thought-provoking summary of just how societies have regarded birth chairs and midwives, and how we got to the current era of continued medical intervention in labor and delivery. To her credit, she has written a history rather than a polemic, but the history cannot help but question whether abandoning birth chairs has been good for mothers or their babies.

Amanda Banks has written a major contribution to women's studies and material culture studies with this book. It addresses many of the historical matters about birth and birthing, focusing on how women were more empowered in previous generations during the birthing process through theutilization of birth chairs. This book is a must for anyone interested in the history of women's experience.

This book provides a very interesting and informative detail of the history of birth culture in America as discovered through the study of birth chairs. In incluedes intriguing pictorial documentations of birth chairs and how they evolved into the modern maternity beds in use today.

What an interesting look into the history of childbirth through the lens of birth stools as artifacts! I gobbled this book up- mostly because I believe that women have been short-changed in their modern birth experiences. A look back reveals that birth was a normal event, even a social event that was accompanied by female attendants and friends. Today, birth is practically, a medical emergency that entails isolation in a sterile room accompanied by mostly male doctors. Women are stronger than modernity realizes...this book proves that!

I couldn't get really into this book because as a labor and delivery nurse, I think I expected a less technical book. I do, however, think that for research papers or projects it would be an interesting and important reference book. For my interest though, I wasn't totally happy with it.... Nice piece of history with photos...Not an expecially interesting read from a purely recreational point of view...

This book was a required reading for a program I am in and so otherwise I may never have picked it up. It is very intersting but at times a bit repetitious. I did enjoy the history of the birth chair and seeing how the birth chair itself evolved as childbirth did when it moved from the home with attendance by the neighborhood midwife to the care of a physician and eventually into the hospital. It is definitly not for light reading but very well researched and helpful for the student.

This book is worth reading if you want a fresh, incisive, and reliable take on the history of women and material culture. Banks reaches across time and diverse cultural experience and creates a compelling interpretation of birthing as a cultural process. She intelligently argues that the concrete environment, and birth chairs in particular, could empower women in moments of dangerous transition, like childbirth.

This book is worth reading if you want a fresh, incisive, and reliable take on the history of women and material culture. Banks reaches across time and diverse cultural experience and creates a compelling interpretation of birthing as a cultural process. She intelligently argues that the concrete environnment, and birth chairs in particular, could empower women in moments of dangerous transition, like childbirth.