Trevathan’s, Evolutionary History of Childbirth focuses on the physical evolution of labour. She compares human birth to those of other mammals, specifically chimpanzees and apes, in an attempt to understand humans past social and atmospheric attitudes towards childbirth.[ 2rd] Here she finds that most mammals prefer to give birth in private where they are protected. This concept of studying our “closest” relatives is fascinating because there is not much known about how humans use to approach birth and this could lead us to an answer. While investigating this idea, Trevathan also came across the common denominator of …show more content…
Rothman, like the people before her, explores the shift from home to hospital. At home, a midwife would tend to every need of the mother and would come when called giving the mother a sense of security and safety.[ 3] Hospitalized births, on the other hand, are stricter, forced and make the baby appear as a product of the hospital instead of the parents.[ 3] She shows this by walking through the medical categories of labour which she believes are arbitrary: labour, delivery and then after birth.[ 3] The mother is kept on a strict schedule that can at times interfere with the natural process, midwifery allow for them to go at their own pace. After the delivery, the baby is taken away and when they mother awakes from her drug induced state that was used to ease the pain or make her forget the actual process is she then present with the baby. The baby at this point is wrapped in a standardized hospital blanket and kept away from the mother who is tied to a schedule of feed and nap time.[ 3] To Rothman and authors she cites in her article, these actions interfere with a natural process. Before doctors were only called in emergencies but most pregnancies can be performed by a woman herself. Rothman gives off a very critical and almost skeptic tone in her article that is hard to get away from but she does a great job and portraying how the role of hospitals and how