Women, Power, and Childbirth: A Case Study of a Free-Standing Birth Center

by Kathleen D. Turkel

Overview

Based on her 12 year study of a free-standing birth center, Turkel analyzes the medical model of childbirth in contrast to the midwifery model. In the medical model of birth, women are defined as patients and birth takes place in hospitals where women have little, if any, control over their experience. The midwifery model views birth as a healthy process where midwives act as teachers and guides for women during pregnancy and birth, helping women and their families to shape and define their experience to meet their needs and expectations. Under existing legal and cultural circumstances, free-standing birth centers face a dilemma. They must continually accomodate the medical model while trying to maintain the midwifery model and give women an option to home birth or to hospital birth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897893176
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/06/1995
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	1280L (what's this?)

About the Author

KATHLEEN DOHERTY TURKEL is Assistant Professor in the Women's Studies Program at the University of Delaware. She teaches courses on motherhood in culture and politics and is a community activist supporting birth centers and creating favorable conditions for midwives.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Technocratic Ideology and the Medical Marginalization of Motherhood and Birth
The Medical Model
The Midwifery Approach to Birth
Free-Standing Birth Centers
Case Study: The Founding of a Free-Standing Birth Center
The Operation of the Birth Center
The Birth Center and the Medical Model: Accommodation and Resistance
Reappropriating Birth
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Turkel (women's studies, U. of Delaware) describes the first 12 years of an anonymous example of a birthing facility physically and usually administratively separate from hospitals, where the model is the home not the hospital, medical procedures and technologies are not used, nurse-midwives attend the birth, and the mothers and babies go home a few hours after birth. After reviewing the medicalization and marginalization of birth and contrasting the medical and midwifery approach, she discusses the founding and operation of the birth center, its ambiguous relations to the medical establishment, and the implications for women reappropriating birth. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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