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User Views of Maternity Care

Abstract:

I am honoured and delighted to be invited to present the Inaugural Address to this NZ College of Midwives Fifth National Conference. Having travelled around the world presenting users' views of maternity care, I have found that every country, without exception, is vigorously developing and enhancing maternity care under the control and influence of medical men. While midwifery has been described as the oldest profession in the world, it has been on the slippery slope since the Middle Ages, when thousands of midwives, or wise women, were burned to death. I do not suggest for one moment that prior to the 20th century midwives worked in an Arcadian world where all was sweetness and light. On the contrary, midwives have always struggled either in conditions of poverty, or battling to maintain the profession in the face of male domination, medicalisation of birth or trying to give care to far too many women at the same time. As research has shown into community midwifery in the 1930s, some midwives committed suicide because of the pressures of the work. One should not forget the recent sad case of the Australian midwife who committed suicide allegedly because of the tensions of trying to provide real midwifery care in a hostile technological environment.

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consumers, male domination, medicalisation, perinatal mortality, routine intervention