Drawn from sixteenth to nineteenth century records to create an account of the midwife's status, duties, and skills, the author goes on to describe the development in eighteenth-century England and America of new techniques in obstetrics that led more and more to doctors to practice as regular accoucheurs. Before this except in cases when a surgeon might be summoned, childbearing was strictly a woman's concern. The author also explores the paradox of men taking the place of midwives among the upper and middle classes in an age that placed great importance on feminine modesty.

In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female "gossips"; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded both from the delivery and from the subsequent month of lying-in. But in the eighteenth century there emerged a new practitioner: the "man-midwife" who acted in lieu of a midwife and delivered normal births. By the late eighteenth century, men-midwives had achieved a permanent place in the management of childbirth, especially in the most lucrative spheres of practice. Why did women desert the traditional midwife? How was it that a domain of female control and collective solidarity became instead a region of male medical practice? What had broken down the barrier that had formerly excluded the male practitioner from the management of birth? This confident and authoritative work explores and explains a remarkable transformation--a shift not just in medical practices but in gender relations. Exploring the sociocultural dimensions of childbirth, Wilson argues with great skill that it was not the desires of medical men but the choices of mothers that summoned man-midwifery into being.

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.

The relation between feminism and men is often presumed to be antagonistic, so that men are expected to resist feminism, and feminists are assumed to hate men. That pattern of opposition is disrupted, however, by the continually increasing numbers of men who are participating in feminist theory and practice, trying to integrate feminist perspectives into their scholarship, teaching, work, play, friendships, and romantic involvements. Responses to this male feminism have varied. Sometimes male feminists find some female feminists critical of men who oppose or decline to join feminist projects, but also rebuff the few men who do undertake feminist projects. On the other hand, some women feminists have unequivocally welcomed men as allies in political, business, religious, and academic contexts. The essays in Men Doing Feminism reveal that there is justification for both views, the skeptical and the enthusiastic, because feminist men are as diverse as feminist women. Many of the eighteen contributors to this book--women, men, blacks, whites, gays, straights, transsexuals--use personal narrative to show ways that men's lives can shape their approaches to doing feminism and to convey the opportunities and challenges involved in integrating feminism into a man's life. Some authors argue that men's experiences prepare them to make contributions that are of crucial importance to feminist theory. Others argue that men must radically reform, or even abandon manhood and masculinity if they are to be feminists. In Men Doing Feminism, feminist theory is used to illuminate men's lives, and men's lives serve as a basis for feminist theory. Contributors: Michael Awkward, Susan Bordo, Harry Brod, Tom Digby, Judith K. Gardiner, C. Jacob Hale, Sandra Harding, Patrick Hopkins, Joy James, David Kahane, Michael Kimmel, Gary Lemons, Larry May, Brian Pronger, Henry Rubin, Richard Schmitt, James P. Sterba, Laurence Mordekhai Thomas, and Thomas E. Wartenberg.