ABSTRACT
Relatively recent changes have seen birth move from the home to the hospital and become surrounded by increasingly complex technology and organisation. Mavis Kirkham argues that birth is also the entry to society and how we manage that entry demonstrates our values as a society. We thus have tensions between supportive relationships around birth and our organisations which embody values of hierarchy, efficiency, technology and expert authority. These tensions can create frustration for midwives and mothers; but behind this shines the knowledge of what birth can be. Birth can result in joyous engagement for both mothers and midwives but without the circumstances which foster such experience alienation is often reported by both these groups.
