“A midwife at every confinement”: Midwifery and Medicalized Childbirth in Ontario and Britain, 1920–1950

This paper compares midwifery in Ontario and Britain in the first half of the 20th century. British midwives improved maternal and infant health and welfare by making childbirth a cooperative, medically managed event in conjunction with physicians. British midwives thus participated in, and contributed to, developments in obstetrics. In contrast, Ontario physicians worked to exclude midwives from participation in the modernization of birth management, relying on a narrower concept of "medicalization" defined as physician dominance. This study challenges the medical profession's assumptions that the exclusion of midwifery in Ontario was necessary to the medicalization of childbirth. The British alternative, where midwives were seen as partners rather than obstacles, illustrates that medicalization in the interest of infant and maternal safety could be integrated with the work of midwives.