Customer Reviews

Mainstreaming Midwives: The Politics of Change

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You know with Davis-Floyd's name (as an editor, and as an author or co-author of several chapters), it's going to be well-researched, dense with information and has a good chance of completely changing your perspective. Repeatedly. The process of professionalization/regulation/legalization currently underway for midwives in the US is fraught with controversy: for the women who are concerned their out-of-hospital options will disappear as part of the compromises inevitable in regulation, for the midwives who see the possible slide to more interventionist birth, for obstetricians and others who see midwifery in and out of the hospital as competition and lower-quality care.

Davis-Floyd and Johnson have navigated a difficult path between developing themes by wrenching the data around in support and handing the reader hundreds of pages of information and narrative of how the legalization process has gone in various states with no guidance. They fell into neither trap, but instead built up the story, state by state, woman by woman, law by painstakingly crafted law. The result develops slowly and requires close attention, but is well worth the effort and provides a depth of ideas for activists working the same problem in the rest of the country that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible to convey in a usable fashion.

I hope this text finds an audience outside the community of birthing women, midwives and health care. It's a brilliant example and analysis of how public policy really happens in the US.

As a student midwife, I found this resource invaluable. It is not just about where we CPMs fit into society today; it also describes where we came from and how we got here. Each chapter is carefully organized and full of examples. The research is quite scholarly as well, encompassing a breadth of sources that provides a basis for further research should one be interested.