Penfield Chester

Sisters on a Journey

Portraits of American Midwives

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"Sisters on a Journey makes these astonishing women real, in all their diversity, in all their glory". -- Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Recreating Motherhood and In Labor. Sisters on a journey is a moving collection of twenty seven profiles -- interviews and photographs -- of contemporary American midwives. These extraordinary women speak with unusual frankness about what brought them to midwifery, what they see as their greatest challenges and rewards, their recollections of their first home births, and their thoughts about the place of midwives in (or out) of the American health care system. Midwifery in North America has had a long and volatile history. Persecuted by the medical establishment for centuries, midwives have long had to suffer for their craft. Not only have external forces threatened the stability of the profession; internal conflicts too have helped to push midwifery close to the edge of extinction. Midwives are a diverse group. Ranging from the original midwives who learned their skills from their mothers and grandmothers, to the independent midwives who of the 1970s who worked to give women an alternative to hospital birth, to the certified nurse-midwives who have extensive formal training, midwives have as many differences between them as they do similarities. This book celebrates midwives from very different ethnic, religious, and ideological backgrounds -- in all of their richness and diversity. Chester presents a community of voices of women who share a commitment to other women and who strive together to ensure for a practice with such a long history, a successful and vibrant future. -- Narrative and photographic portraits of twenty-five midwives fromdiverse backgrounds. -- Describes and analyzes current debates among midwives.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Rutgers University Press
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. September 1997
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 251mm x 151mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 524g
• ISBN-13: 9780813524085
• ISBN-10: 0813524083
• Artikelnr.: 21406998

Autorenporträt

PENFIELD CHESTER is a midwife who has a rural home birth practice in western Massachusetts. She has been attending births since 1980 and is presently the New England Regional Representative and Education Committee Chair of the Midwives' Alliance of North America.  SARAH CHESTER MCKUSICK is the mother of three daughters, all of whose home births were assisted by her sister Penfield. Over the past twenty years, she has traveled and photographed extensively in the Unites States, Asia, Europe, and Central America. She is drawn to portraiture and social landscapes. 

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
Introduction
¿Sisters on a Journey: Portraits of American Midwives
Common Threads
Afterword
Appendix A
Appendix B
Bibliography
Index