Historically speaking, an overview of changing practices of childbirth offers an overview of the changing dynamics of gender and the increasing authority of professional medicine, particularly in the United States and Western Europe. As midwives began to be "phased out" in the late eighteenth century, they were replaced by male doctors, and birthing practices changed as a result. Increasing medical knowledge and experience reinforced this shift, eventually pathologizing pregnancy and childbirth and tying childbirth to a hospital environment. In the late twentieth century, however, many women began calling for a return to the earlier, less medicalized, models of childbirth, and the debate about the costs and benefits of various birthing practices continues to develop today.

In colonial America, deliveries were attended by midwives as a matter of course. These women drew upon years of experience, often passing their knowledge from one generation to the next, and...