ABSTRACT
In the United States in recent years disenchantment with standard maternity care has been growing: on occasion, the appropriateness of the medical model for our entire conception of birth has been challenged. Yet there has been little information available concerning the range of alternatives to current obstetric practices and, because each culture tends to consider its way of managing childbirth superior to any other, little opportunity to generate and evaluate such alternatives. A cross-cultural comparison of childbirth systems can yield the information necessary for an understanding of the process of childbirth that is unavailable from within any particular system. Cross-cultural study of childbirth is also important for another, somewhat more complex reason. Traditional birthing systems are beginning to change under the influence of Western medicine. Ironically, however, since Western obstetric practices are themselves under pressure to accommodate to changing views of childbirth, some of the very practices currently exported to developing countries are being questioned at home. Furthermore, since only women give birth, studying the many ways in which childbirth is managed in different cultures can broaden our appreciation of female networks, interests and strategies. There has been a growing recognition that our views of social organization have consistently ignored the place of women in society, a deficiency that has resulted in distorted theory and impoverished ethnography (Rosaldo & Lamphere, 1974).
