ABSTRACT
The absorption of midwifery into medical practice is a recent process, a development linked in many western countries with the diminishing role of midwives, the increased involvement of the man-midwife, the general practitioner and the obstetrician in the birthing process and, in the twentieth century, the increased hospitalization of childbirth. While it is generally recognized that the midwife has been with us since biblical times, and that midwifery is the oldest female occupation and without doubt one of the most important, the focus of historical studies has been very much on this process of decline in the midwife’s place in obstetric work-on competition between the traditional midwife and her male rivals, the increase in medical intervention and, as the role of women in the birth process diminished, the shift in emphasis in childbirth from the social to the medical sphere.
