Adrian Wilson Knihy

Childbirth in early-modern England is examined through its connections to social institutions and relationships, particularly focusing on the themes of illegitimacy, marriage, and gender roles. The book emphasizes the collective ritual of childbirth as a significant event controlled by women, highlighting its impact on their lives. By concentrating on the seventeenth century while also referencing the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, it provides fresh insights into the patriarchal family structure and the dynamics of gender relations during this period.

Your first fumbled sex, remember that? The first exotic dish that made you aware of your taste buds, your first car, job, alcoholic haze, marriage, child, murder? After the first it will always be necessary to regret what comes next.

Originally published 1995 The Making of Man-Midwifery looks at how the eighteenth century witnessed a revolution in childbirth practices. By the last quarter of the century increasing numbers of babies were being delivered by men - a dramatic shift from the women-only ritual that had been standard throughout Western history. This authoritative and challenging work explains this transformation in medical practice and remarkable shift in gender relations. By tracing the actual development and transmission of the new midwifery skills through the period, the book addresses both technological and feminist arguments of the period. The study is distinctive in treating childbirth as both a bodily and a social event and in explaining how the two were intimately connected. Practical obstetrics is shown to have been shaped by the social relations surrounding deliveries, and specific techniques were associated with distinctive places and political allegiances. The books studies how increasing numbers emergent male-midwives had overtaken women in the skill of delivering children and how as such expectant mothers chose to use these male-midwives, thus heralding the growth of male-midwives in the period.