Post-War Mothers

For pregnant women in the 1940s and 50s, Dr. Grantly Dick-Read (1890-1959) proposed natural childbirth as the "normal" way to have babies, making drugs, instruments, and even hospitalization unnecessary. His book, first published in Great Britain in 1942 as Revelation of Childbirth, spoke of the joys of natural childbirth. Women from around the world, but primarily Britain and the United States, wrote long, detailed, and poignant letters in response, describing their own experiences. This edited collection of correspondence affords a rare look at the childbirth experiences of women in hospitals and birthing centers in post-war America and Great Britain. In these letters, women, from the perspective of the patient, discuss the way they were viewed by society and hospitals, as well as by their own partners, doctors, and nurses. Ultimately, Post-War Mothers provides an important opportunity to examine womens' own evaluation of the American and British "childbirth experience" in the first decade of the post-war period.