Birth as an American Rite of Passage

<p>This classic book first published in 1992 and again in 2003 has inspired three generations of childbearing people birth activists and researchers and birth practitioners—midwives doulas nurses and obstetricians—to take a fresh look at the standard procedures that are routinely used to manage American childbirth. It was the first book to identify these non-evidence-based obstetric interventions as rituals that enact and transmit the core values of the American technocracy thereby answering the pressing question of <i>why</i> these interventions continue to be performed despite all evidence to the contrary. This third edition brings together Davis-Floyd's insights into the intense ritualization of labor and birth and the technocratic humanistic and holistic models of birth with new data collected in recent years. </p>