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From Home to Hospital: Jewish and Italian American Women and Childbirth, 1920-1940 (review)

Reaching beyond the study of professional obstetrics, historians have uncovered a rich diversity of childbirth practices and beliefs. They often find ethnicity and generational differences to be useful lenses for examining changing values and routines in childbirth. For example, Charlotte Borst’s investigation of midwifery in Wisconsin highlights the significance of the parturient’s ethnicity in the selection of birth attendant; her recognition of the importance of ethnic identification helps explain the shift from midwives to physicians. Similarly, Jacquelyn Litt’s articles cogently demonstrate both cultural continuities and discontinuities over several generations of Jewish American women.1 These authors are now joined by Angela Danzi with her close study of Jewish and Italian American women who birthed at home and in hospitals and clinics during the period between the World Wars. Danzi observes that before 1920, most Jewish and Italian immigrant women relied on midwives to help conduct home births. After 1920, most Jewish women readily turned to male physicians associated with local medical institutions, while the choices made by her Italian informants were more diverse: some continued with midwives, others utilized private physicians and hospitals associated with public clinics, still others had their earliest births at home and only later moved into the hospital. For Danzi the important question is, what explains this variety? Why did some second-generation mothers easily move into the modern hospital setting and medically directed childbirths, while others did not? The heart of Danzi’s study is a series of interviews conducted with nearly