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Midwives in Ontario Hospitals: The Mainstreaming of “Alternative” Childbearing

Childbearing and the Changing Nature of Parenthood: The Contexts, Actors, and Experiences of Having Children

ISBN: 978-1-83867-067-2, eISBN: 978-1-83867-066-5

Publication date: 25 November 2019

Abstract

This research studied the integration of Ontario midwives into the hospital system, through analysis of 15 semi-structured interviews with midwives throughout the Canadian province. In 1994, following activism from parents and families who wanted “alternative” choices for childbearing, Ontario became the first Canadian province to legislate and publicly fund midwives. This followed nearly a century in which midwifery had all but disappeared in Canada, in part due to deliberate campaigns to discredit woman-centered health care and knowledge. The findings from this research were considered through the lens of Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge, to identify the ways in which medicalized norms have been privileged in Ontario birth care, and to demonstrate how pregnant people¹ and midwives have struggled against the power/knowledge of hospital environments. This research looked at the ways that midwifery, as a social movement born of feminist and countercultural activism, offers possibilities for resisting disciplinary power. Midwives in Ontario offer an alternative to medicalized childbirth which recognizes that a birth caregiver’s role is not only the physical care of parents and babies, but guidance for families during a liminal experience – the birth of a new child, which changes a family permanently and profoundly.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

This text results from a research study completed at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, in 2015. The author wishes to acknowledge financial support from an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Most importantly, she would like to thank the 15 anonymous midwives who participated in this research. The author would also like to thank several members of her academic communities for their assistance. Most particularly, the author would like to thank Brian A. Brown, who served as her advisor for this project. There are so many insights in this work that would not have been possible without him. She would also like to thank Kyle Asquith and Susan Bryant for their assistance and guidance. Several colleagues offered feedback and suggestions that helped to improve earlier drafts of this work: Miranda J. Brady, Emily Hiltz, Derek Antoine, and Daniela Mastrocola. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who offered suggestions to improve the text.

Citation

Cardin, M. (2019), "Midwives in Ontario Hospitals: The Mainstreaming of “Alternative” Childbearing", Costa, R.P. and Blair, S.L. (Ed.) Childbearing and the Changing Nature of Parenthood: The Contexts, Actors, and Experiences of Having Children (Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research, Vol. 14), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-119. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-353520190000014005

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited