The Feminist History of Childbirth

The popular feminist history which I think neither of us are completely convinced by is that it used to be that childbirth was completely the domain of women and local midwives who had kind of um women's knowledge. Then you had the man midwife who became the obstetrician who arrives on the scene and kind of rests this from women's hands, so we see a medicalization of childbirth in early modern period. Latin being the formal language of medicine is going to start to predominate over vernacular language of midwives. We're not quite sure if male midwives with their book learning and mechanical instruments are dangerous or aren't up to speed on some of the advances in anatomy and