The most recommended books about midwives

This account of Smith’s lauded 35-year career as a midwife in rural Alabama is fascinating.

What I appreciate about this book most is how it maps out the growing tensions that developed between African-American lay midwives and the medical establishment, once the Department of Labor began to regulate midwifery practices in the early twentieth century.

From increased scrutinization and criminalization of folk traditions, like medicinal teas and oil massages, licensed midwives with clinical training found themselves hamstrung by increasing regulation, until they were pushed out of the field altogether in the late 1970s.

The vacuum of maternal healthcare left in their wake has been devastating. Such that, we’re still seeing repercussions to this day. 

This is a darkly beautiful novel, set in the period after the American Revolution, a time of great hardship for many Americans. Hannah Trevor has lost her husband and three children, and she cobbles out an independent if marginal life for herself as a midwife in rural Maine. She finds love with a married man, and when he is falsely accused of rape and murder, Hannah sets out to uncover the truth. I was drawn in by Lawrence’s striking prose and by Hannah, who is strong, resourceful, and in many ways, a loner. 

I read this novel when I was hungry for books with strong female characters.

The main character, the unnamed midwife, didn’t disappoint. Her journey emphasizes the importance of choice and agency when it comes to reproductive decisions. She works to empower women to make choices about their own bodies and reproductive futures, even in a world where such choices are limited.

If you’re looking for a fresh and funny take on romance then, The Midwife Crisis is the book for you. Written in my family’s hometown of Galway, in Island, not only could I relate to this author's story, but it was a new take on a normal love genre.

I came across this memoir while researching Irish mother and baby homes for my own novel. June Goulding was a young midwife in the 1950s when she was hired by the Sacred Heart Convent in Cork.  Here she found girls,  some as young as 13, punished for the sin of being pregnant, forced to work, tarring roads, scrubbing floors, and rearing their children until they were handed over for adoption – in exchange for a donation to the church – often without their consent. Thirty years later, haunted by what she was party to, Goulding tells the story of how she tried to relieve the suffering of these unfortunate women. 

As a writer who works under China’s censorship, Mo Yan spins literary gold in his novel Frog by blending high farce with social commentary. Narrator Tadpole’s aunt Gugu, a feisty woman with extraordinary gifts, evolves from a legendary midwife to a demonic one-child policy enforcer, then becomes an incorrigible go-between for surrogate and intentional parents. Readers see how China and rural Gaomi townships have changed, almost beyond description, from Maoist times to the current hyper-capitalistic phase. Much of the story is funny, brutal, yet firmly grounded, as people endure, and many perish during a half-century of social and political turmoil.

Reading this book, and others in the series, is like a warm hug! It details a view of a small village school in the 1960s and it is just such a joy to read.

The stories about the school and the children are touching, funny and emotional. This book is a great example of social history and it just makes you want to work in a tiny village school and to be around children like these. It’s such a fulfilling read. Village Christmas is wonderful too, I read it in December every year.

In 1991 I was a young lawyer, just learning about the death-with-dignity movement. I had practiced nursing and medicine for 20 years and tended many dying patients. But I’d thought little about patient choice and empowerment at the end of life. In my ignorance, I turned to Dr. Timothy Quill and was struck by his clarity and courage. Tim was the first mainstream physician to be candid and compassionate about patients’ legitimate wish to advance the time of death if cancer or other illness traps them in “their worst nightmare.” This book, and his earlier Death with Dignity, are the definitive primers into the hows and whys of medical aid in dying, a practice that is authorized in many states now, but was a felony everywhere when Dr. Quill brought it to light.

I was born in my parent’s house which, like all in our area, had no central heating. That was the reality of giving birth in the forties and fifties in England. Jennifer’s memoir of midwifery in working-class Poplar, in the docklands of London, gave rise to one of the most popular TV series. The BBC has taken the story beyond Jennifer’s memoir but the tone is the same. The TV series, like the book, tackles difficult social, cultural, and economic issues, with insight, compassion, and humour. I aimed to tackle issues of class, gender, and race in my memoir in a similar tone.

Too many babies were dying at birth (or shortly thereafter) and French authorities had become obsessed with increasing the country’s population. Who would have thought, though, that King Louis XV of France would decide to sponsor and finance (for over 20 years) a remarkable Paris-trained midwife to tour France on behalf of the re-education of peasant midwives? As the King’s envoy, Angélique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray (born c. 1715) toured France from 1760 to 1783 carrying out her mission in some 40 cities and large towns.

Her important textbook on obstetrics, first published in 1759 (5 editions by 1785) and her invention of an obstetrical cloth female mannequin (she called it her “machine”) facilitated her revolutionary hands-on method of teaching the craft of delivering babies. Du Coudray was an imposing presence and a remarkable exception amidst the ongoing illiteracy and superstition that plagued peasant women. Nina Gelbart’s biography, the… show more.