The confinement of women: childbirth and hospitalization in Vancouver.

Abstract

Only relatively recently have large numbers of women been confined to institutions for the delivery of their children. The institutionalization of childbirth has radically transformed a major human experience, and the impact of this transformation has been a subject of debate among mothers, childbirth reformers, medical professionals and social scientists. For its defenders, the hospital has served as an important vehicle for wider distribution of obstetrical supervision and treatment with a concomitant reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality. Critics have responded that delivering these services within the confines of a hierarchical, bureaucratized institution has contributed to the medicalization of childbirth, depriving women of control over their bodies and creating new psychological and physiological disorders. As this contemporary debate rages, historians have begun to examine the historical process whereby doctors appropriated, and to some degree women relinquished, control over childbirth. This study contributes to