The American Way of Birth brilliantly describes the ways in which childbirth is conducted in the contemporary United States. It shows how the "conduct of birth" in the hospital, the home, and the free-standing birth center impacts both the medical outcome of birth and the birthing woman"s psyche. Whether birth is a highly "medicalized" and surgical event or a "spiritual event" without medical intervention, childbirth is inevitably "socially constructed." This book provides a provocative historical account as to how and why things came to be as they are in the birth room. It elucidates the nature of the doctor-female relationship, issues of race and class, the reasons for the increase in the Cesarean birth rate, and the impact of the malpractice insurance industry on childbirth practices. Several studies of out-of-hospital birth are presented. In addition, practices of nurse and "lay" midwives are explored, both inside the hospital and out. With contributions from the most highly knowledgeable scholars of our time--Pamela Eakins, Ann Oakley, Nancy Shrom Dye, Diana Scully, Janet Carlisle Bogdan, Barbara Katz Rothman, Sandra K. Danziger, Margaret K. Nelson, Pamela S. Summey, Wenda Brewster O"Reilly, Myra Gerson Gilfix, Gary A, Richwald, Regi L. Teasley, Linda Janet Holmes, Deborah Leveen and Dorothy Wertz--this book is required reading for anyone interested in the history of childbirth, childbirth practices, and childbirth reform. As Ann Oakley writes in the Foreword, "It is only through a careful examination of the past and an analytical look at the present that we can begin to construct a future in which the pain of birthing, in all senses, is understood, acted on, and diminished."