Myths of Modern Maternity: Negotiating Meaning in the Development of Obstetric Culture in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

At the turn-of-the-twentieth-century, as doctors in Los Angeles helped boosters promote an Anglo-only city of health, and doctors nationwide professionalized, complex cultural changes were happening in maternity care. Issues of race, class, gender, urbanization, eugenics, infant mortality, and the role of modern doctors influenced and complicated the developing maternity culture. Surprisingly, however, a strong counter narrative among physicians challenged accusations against women, while questioning procedures that doctors who valued surgical skills increasingly implemented into maternity care. This book focuses its analysis on “The Southern California Practitioner,” a medical journal founded by influential Angelenos, that published the papers and discussions from local medical meetings alongside jokes, editorials, and articles, from 1886-1922. In its pages, an astounding number of doctors, including many women, contested predictable topics: eradicating midwives, promoting medicalized care, and supporting alternatives to mothers’ milk. Gradually, this maternity culture developed within the region’s colleges, hospitals, settlements, and public health services.