Delivering Motherhood : Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries

In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, motherhood in Canada, as elsewhere in the western world, became contested terrain. Male medical practitioners vied with midwives, and midwives with nurses, while reform-minded middle-class women joined with the eugenically minded state officials in efforts to control the quantity and quality of the population. As reproduction gained in importance as a political as well as a religious issue, motherhood became the centre of debate over public health and welfare policies and formed the cornerstone of feminist and anti-feminist, as well as nationalist and pacifist ideologies.

Originally published in 1990, Delivering Motherhood (now with a new preface by Katherine Arnup) is the first comprehensive study on the history of this complex development in Canada, where control over the different stages of reproduction, from conception, to delivery, to childcare, shifted from the central figure of the mother to experts and professionals. The contributions range from the treatment of single mothers in Montreal in the Depression to La Leche League in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

This book will be an essential read for students and researchers of women’s studies, feminist studies, women’s history, and sociology.