Coming Home

Paula A. Michaels, Monash University, Bulletin of the History of Medicine In Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth, Wendy Kline offers an engaging read about an important chapter in the feminist health movement and the history of childbirth...Coming Home is a good read and a welcome addition to the growing literature on the American feminist health movement and the history of childbirth.

Elizabeth Reis, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Kline has written an engaging history of how midwives accomplished this feat in light of the reach and power of institutionalized medicine. Anyone interested in learning where and how babies were born will want to read this book...Kline's book will undoubtedly convince readers that midwives should be at the center of delivering these better outcomes.

Alain Touwaide, Doody's Reviews this book could (and probably should) lead to a reconsideration of a medical practice that has altered the beginning of life in this world ... a book that is worth the effort. It should be on permanent display in multiple places

Rosemary Mander, Emeritus Professor of Midwifery, Formerly University of Edinburgh The publication of Wendy Kline's book is welcome, as it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how midwifery has developed. Its major strength to me as a midwife is that it takes me back to my roots, reminding me of the fundamentals of the meaning of midwifery

Kelly O'Donnell, Nursing Clio In her engaging and well-researched book ... Kline presents a new and necessary chapter in the story of the medicalization of childbirth in the United States: the history of the home birth movement. Kline has a keen eye for entertaining anecdotes and knows exactly when to sprinkle in intriguing biographical details ... We get a real sense of who these midwives were, how they fit within a broader home birth movement, and how, between the 1970s and the present, their practices and Americans' reception of them evolved. More than a history of the home birth movement, Coming Home updates the history of American childbirth and complicates a number of big ideas in the history of modern medicine, making it a terrific addition to the field of women's health ... A new starting point for the history of childbirth.

Audrey Farley, Marginalia The real critical strength of Coming Home is the author's ability to read beyond midwives' professional gains, examining their influence on traditional medicine, spiritual movements, psychiatry, civil rights, and the public imagination.

Judy Norsigian and Jane Pincus, co-authors and co-founders of Our Bodies Ourselves This is a magnificent and nuanced history of home birth and midwifery over the past half century. Kline not only depicts with great care and precision just how resistance to unnecessarily medicalized birth developed in communities across the United States, she traces the development of a complex social movement that continue...

Wendy Kline is Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine in the Department of History at Purdue University. She is the author of Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom and Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave.

Acknowledgments Introduction: From Hospital to Home Ch 1. Back to Bed: From Hospital to Home Obstetrics in the City of Chicago Ch 2. Middle-Class Midwifery: Transforming Birth Practices in Suburban Washington, DC Ch 3. Psychedelic Birth: The Emergence of the Hippie Midwife Ch 4. The Bowland Bust: Medicine and the Law in Santa Cruz, California Ch 5. From El Paso to Lexington: The Formation of the Midwives Alliance of North America Ch 6. From Professionalization to Education: The Creation of the Seattle Midwifery School Conclusion: There's No Place Like Home Notes Bibliography Index