Midwives

“By the 1920s, then, the movement to control midwifery was fraught with cultural and racial tension: white, native-born professionals versus foreign-born women and women of color” (Munch, 115). . . . In states where midwives attended a high proportion of births, S-T funds consequently helped to pay for surveys of midwives’ practices, classes for untrained midwives, and inspections of licensed midwives (116) . . . But supervision of midwives went so far beyond these legitimate requirements that it proved the most intrusive of S-T initiatives and the one that pushed hardest toward professional cultural hegemony” (116) Intrusiveness extended to midwife’s personal cleanliness and appearance (116-17).