SOC244H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Prenatal Care, Structural Functionalism, Talcott Parsons
Document Summary
Dorothy wertz 1983 what birth has done for doctors. When women did suffer ailments of deaths was cause of unsterilized forceps. That infection wasn"t linked to the lack of sterilization. Physicians needed to wash their hands between seeing patients. Obstetrics or midwifery: first specialty taught un american medical schools. Money to be earned a major impetus for discrediting the work of midwives. Main reasons for decline of female midwife (wertz and wertz) Change in cultural attitudes about the right spaces for women to occupy. Attitudes that women could not be confronted with the facts of medicine. Body as machine- look at our body as the same way we would manage a car, the view of the body as an instrument. Increased belief in use of medical technology, women have seen their control over childbirth decline. Act between patient and doctor not between women and women dominated by alienation for women at the time of their birthing.
