Motherhood inherently involves labor. The seemingly perennial notion that paid work outside the home and motherhood are incompatible, however, grows out of specific cultural conditions established in Britain and her colonies during the long eighteenth century. With Laboring Mothers, Ellen Malenas Ledoux synthesizes and expands on two feminist dialogues to deliver an innovative transatlantic cultural history of working motherhood. Addressing both actual historical women and fabricated representations of a type, Ledoux demonstrates how contingent ideas about the public sphere and maternity functioned together to create systems of power and privilege among working mothers. Popular culture has long thrown doubt on the idea that women can be both productive and reproductive at the same time. Although the critical task of raising and providing for a family should, in theory, foster solidarity, this has not historically proven the case. Laboring Mothers demonstrates how contemporary associations surrounding economic status, race, and working motherhood have their roots in an antiquated and rigid system of inequality among women that dates back to the Enlightenment.

Facing the polar forces of an epidemic of Cesarean sections and epidurals and home-like labor rooms, American birth is in transition. Caught between the most extreme medicalization — best seen in a Cesarean section rate of nearly 30 percent — and a rhetoric of women’s "choices" and "the natural," women and their midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and nurses labor on. Laboring On offers the voices of all of these practitioners, all women trying to help women, as they struggle with this increasingly split vision of birth. Updating Barbara Katz Rothman's now-classic In Labor, the first feminist sociological analysis of birth in the United States, Laboring On gives a comprehensive picture of the ever-changing American birth practices and often conflicting visions of birth practitioners. The authors deftly weave compelling accounts of birth work, by midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and nurses, into the larger sociohistorical context of health care practices and activism and offer provocative arguments about the current state of affairs and the future of birth in America.

This book will explore the childbirth process through globally diverse perspectives in order to offer a broader context with which to think about birth. We will address multiple rituals and management models surrounding the labor and birth process from communities across the globe. Labor and birth are biocultural events that are managed in countless ways. We are particularly interested in the notion of power. Who controls the pregnancy and the birth? Is it the hospital, the doctor, or the in-laws, and in which cultures does the mother have the control? These decisions, regarding place of birth, position, who receives the baby and even how the mother may or may not behave during the actual delivery, are all part of the different ways that birth is conducted. One chapter of the book will be devoted to midwives and other birth attendants. There will also be chapters on the Evolution of Birth, on Women’s Birth Narratives, and on Child Spacing and Breastfeeding. This book will bring together global research conducted by professional anthropologists, midwives and doctors who work closely with the individuals from the cultures they are writing about, offering a unique perspective direct from the cultural group.

Forced Labor: Maternity Care in the United States provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of hospital child birth in the U.S. This book discusses and analyzes the features of maternity care that vary considerably from one hospital or service to another. Organized into six chapters, this book begins with an overview of the basic stages in the care of the pregnant woman, including prenatal care, labor and delivery, and postpartum treatment for mother and child. This text then describes the major characters in the hospital that will usher the patient through her pregnancy, delivery, and recovery. Other chapters consider the structural and institutional sources of unsatisfactory experience of many patients in a prenatal clinic. The final chapter deals with the intensive study of childbirth context. This book is a valuable resource for all women who will face pregnancy. Gynecologists, nurses, and clinicians will also find this book extremely useful.

"An anthology that will explore the birth experience from a wide-ranging group of esteemed writers (including Julia Glass, Lauren Groff, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, and others), with all the force, frankness, humor, and honesty that the best personal writing has to offer"--

This book is a guide to labour and delivery management for trainees in obstetrics and gynaecology, and midwives. Divided into three sections, the text begins with detailed discussion on labour, from preparation before labour and delivery, through the different stages of labour, to postpartum care. The next section covers caesarean delivery, and the third, ‘special labour’ which explains labour complications, twins, prelabour rupture of membranes, and more. The book is authored by recognised experts from the USA and Italy, and is based on evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Clinical photographs, diagrams and tables further enhance learning. Key points Guide to labour and delivery management for trainees in obstetrics and gynaecology, and midwives Text based on evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) Recognised author team from USA and Italy Includes clinical photographs, diagrams and tables