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A woman's childbirth care choices have a profound effect on her pregnancy and childbirth experience. Today, some pregnant women have three different options to choose from: obstetrical care and a hospital birth, a midwife-assisted birth in a hospital, and a midwife-assisted birth at an ...

A woman's childbirth care choices have a profound effect on her pregnancy and childbirth experience. Today, some pregnant women have three different options to choose from: obstetrical care and a hospital birth, a midwife-assisted birth in a hospital, and a midwife-assisted birth at an out-of-hospital birthing center. By using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this volume examines how and why 200 women made their choices, how satisfied they were with the care they received, and the impact of their choices on the availability of options in the future. Although most women in the U.S. still choose an obstetrician and a hospital setting, the number of women who choose to be assisted by a Certified Nurse Midwife is growing with the result that this profession is acquiring new strength and jurisdiction over childbirth care.

Based on her 12 year study of a free-standing birth center, Turkel analyzes the medical model of childbirth in contrast to the midwifery model. In the medical model of birth, women are defined as patients and birth takes place in hospitals where women have little, if any, control over their ...

Based on her 12 year study of a free-standing birth center, Turkel analyzes the medical model of childbirth in contrast to the midwifery model. In the medical model of birth, women are defined as patients and birth takes place in hospitals where women have little, if any, control over their experience. The midwifery model views birth as a healthy process where midwives act as teachers and guides for women during pregnancy and birth, helping women and their families to shape and define their experience to meet their needs and expectations. Under existing legal and cultural circumstances, free-standing birth centers face a dilemma. They must continually accomodate the medical model while trying to maintain the midwifery model and give women an option to home birth or to hospital birth.

"This is a beautifully written and well-organized book, combining theoretical insights and ethnographic detail. It represents an important contribution to medical anthropological scholarship on reproduction as well as to the theoretical debates on modernity and development."--Carolyn Sargent, author ...

"This is a beautifully written and well-organized book, combining theoretical insights and ethnographic detail. It represents an important contribution to medical anthropological scholarship on reproduction as well as to the theoretical debates on modernity and development."--Carolyn Sargent, author of "Maternity, Medicine and Power

"By locating women's experiences of childbearing within a local political economy of class, caste and gender politics and international debates about development and human rights, "Birth on the Threshold provides a subtle and important contribution to the understanding of Indian modernity. With telling use of case material, the author shows us how poor Tamil women in contemporary south India are both willing collaborators and victims of changes in medical practice. Women's experiences at the hands of hospital staff, who often insert intrauterine contraceptive devices without their consent, are juxtaposed with their own perceptions and strategies of accommodation, negotiation and resistance. This book will be essential reading for students of gender, medical anthropology and of South Asia in general."--Patricia Jeffery, co-author of "Labour Pains and Labour Power: Women and Childbearing in India

"Compellingly argued and exquisitely written, Van Hollen's work stands as the best of a new generation of ethnographies critically rethinking the anthropology of childbirth. Accessible to anyone with an interest in the everyday and extraordinary politics of development, family planning, and poor women's lives, "Birth on the Threshold is necessary reading for all scholars of body, gender, and governmentality in South Asia and destined to become a classic in medicalanthropology. "--Lawrence Cohen, author of "No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things