Maternity charities, the edinburgh maternity scheme and the medicalisation of Childbirth, 1900-1925

Abstract

Increased medical involvement in maternal welfare has been linked with the introduction of local authority administered schemes associated with government concern for women's health that reached a peak during the First World War. Although local studies have noted the work of philanthropic groups, the implication has been that their contribution to the medicalisation of childbirth was small. This article uses analysis of the personal health records of users of Edinburgh's maternity charities to argue that the process of medicalisation was begun by these charities, and preceded the introduction of the Edinburgh Maternity and Child Welfare Scheme in 1917. However, whilst it is argued that initially the Scheme had limited impact, the article concludes that its funding and stability offered the opportunity for more dynamic management of abnormal pregnancies. Thus this encouraged a gradual shift in attitude to birth from an essentially physiological event to a potentially pathological incident. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.2011This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2011 The Author.