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Expertise and Control: Childbearing in Three Twentieth-Century Working-Class Lancashire Communities

This article draws on oral history evidence and annual reports of the Medical Officers of Health for the communities of Barrow, Lancaster, and Preston to document the shift in the place and the managers of childbearing, from working-class homes and traditional midwives in the early twentieth century to hospitals and licensed midwives and physicians after World War II. It explores gender and class aspects of this transition, concluding that the medicalization of childbearing has had negative as well as positive results—not least of which has been the disempowerment of the working-class women who were traditional health authorities in their communities.