Book Review: Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains by Jennifer Hill

Abstract

While all historians came to be through the process of birth, little attention has been paid to the historical significance of childbirth. Perhaps this is because birth is a natural process, something that is part of human life, rather than a medical condition that needs to be met, that we have neglected to study it. Building upon archaeologist Laurie Wilkie’s assertion that there is a tendency to ignore motherhood in her field, Jennifer Hill points out there is a lack of focus on reproduction and childbirth in the field of history also. Hill’s historical analysis of reproduction and childbirth at the turn of the nineteenth century fills this gap in scholarship, while challenging previous ideas about mothers and midwives as well as the overall capitalist-individualist narrative of the American West. Framing her work with the human life cycle: conception, birth, life, and death, Hill seeks to normalize childbirth while also emphasizing the historical importance it played in the colonization of the region. The high death rates of mothers who settled in states like Montana and Wyoming have been dismissed as a consequence of relying on midwives to guide the birthing process. Hill argues that it was not the incompetence of midwives that caused a high death rate, although this was the narrative that public health officials at the time pushed. Instead, the harsh material conditions and poverty that settler women faced contributed to high death rates during and after childbirth. While these conditions made childbirth risky, Hill praises the informal network of support that women created for its ability to manage healthcare. Birthing the West is an excellent addition to the historical field, as it elevates previously silenced voices while challenging major arguments about the American West. Often isolated in their rural settlements, women who settled in the Rockies and plains did not have the same access to healthcare that their urban counterparts had. Despite this challenge, solo birthing experiences were rare, as women formed a community to assist each other. Using personal letters, oral interviews, and journals, Hill maps a unique reciprocal economy that existed among settler women in this region. Still expected to maintain the home and farm, “chronically fatigued mothers living in isolation faced greater physical and emotional burdens than urban women” (58). Hill’s research shows that despite their stressful lives, plains and Rockies rural mothers were able to rely on each other in order to safely give birth and recover. Hill’s statistical data is from the Children’s Bureau, which under Julia Lathrop, interviewed just under five hundred new mothers in rural Montana during the Summer of 1917. According to their findings, the majority of maternity health care during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was provided by midwives. While some of these midwives had formal training, many gained their knowledge from personal experience and through assisting other women rather than formal education. In fact, it was rare for a woman who had never given birth to be a midwife. In the absence of a midwife, community women stepped in to offer any guidance they could, sometimes trading their time and efforts for material goods such as eggs and butter. Women would often stay for many days after the birth, assisting with the duties of the home that could not wait while the new mother recovered. Book Reviews