Abstract/Details

Birth City: Race and Violence in the History of Childbirth and Midwifery in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Borderlands, 1907-2013

Sinclair, Heather Marie.   The University of Texas at El Paso ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  2016. 10190061.

Abstract (summary)

Since the founding of The Maternity Center by midwife Shari Daniels in 1976, thousands of women have traveled from throughout North America to El Paso, Texas to train in midwifery, making the U.S.-Mexico border region the epicenter of the North American home birth movement. Through an analysis of government reports, periodicals, archival documents, and oral histories, this study investigates the complex process through which midwifery and birthing at home, racialized as “primitive” and Mexican by White health officials and reformers in early twentieth–century El Paso, transformed into practices associated with White middle-class women by the century’s end. Centered on themes of professionalization, medicalization, and citizenship at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality, “Birth City” demonstrates that the decades-long precarious status of Mexican reproduction in the U.S. has been critical to the development of the North American home birth movement. It further reveals that the movement has uncritically adopted many of the very racialist ideologies and practices employed in the past to denigrate and eventually eliminate ethnic Mexican midwives and deprive healthcare to working-class Mexican mothers and their infants. By focusing on how gender, class and race are interlinked and constructed, and in turn how they have shaped transformations in childbearing practices and motherhood in border society, this study sheds light on the structural inequalities inherent in the history of the U.S. home birth movement and midwifery, offering a more nuanced understanding of the past that continues to impinge on us today.

Indexing (details)


Subject
American studies;
Womens studies;
History
Classification
0323: American studies
0453: Womens studies
0578: History
Identifier / keyword
Social sciences; Borderlands; Childbirth; Midwifery; Race; Reproduction; Women
Title
Birth City: Race and Violence in the History of Childbirth and Midwifery in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Borderlands, 1907-2013
Author
Sinclair, Heather Marie
Number of pages
190
Degree date
2016
School code
0459
Source
DAI-A 78/12(E), Dissertation Abstracts International
ISBN
978-0-355-08748-2
Advisor
Chávez, Ernesto; McGee Deutsch, Sandra
Committee member
Chávez Leyva, Yolanda; Eber, Christine
University/institution
The University of Texas at El Paso
Department
History
University location
United States -- Texas
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
10190061
ProQuest document ID
1932222302
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/docview/1932222302