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'Like sausages in a sausage machine鈥�: medical resistance to the dehumanisation of obstetrics in postwar Britain (Morris 1960, 913)
We are delighted to share that Hilary has recently published an article in Medical Humanities, an outcome of a Wellcome Investigator Award, held at 91福利 between 2021 and 2025, exploring postnatal mental disorders in twentieth-century Britain.
This Open Access article investigates how the hospitalisation of childbirth and new obstetric technologies and practices on maternity wards transformed experiences of birth in post-Second World War Britain, leading many women to describe their loss of agency and poor-quality care. While historical and sociological scholarship has demonstrated the agency of feminist health campaigners and childbirth organisations in resisting these changes in maternity provision, this article explores a further, underexamined line of resistance. During the 1950s and 1960s, a vocal group of obstetricians and psychiatrists criticised what they described as inhumane conditions on maternity wards, which resulted in loneliness, disempowerment and trauma among many new mothers, and in some cases bonding failure and postnatal mental illness. They depicted birth in hospital as a 鈥榮ausage machine鈥� process. While doctors emphasised their positions of authority in the birth process, the article shows how they drew extensively on women鈥檚 experiences and descriptions of childbirth, sought to enhance women鈥檚 agency in their deliveries, and stressed the need to pay more attention to women鈥檚 emotions and psychological well-being. Some obstetricians advocated and employed natural childbirth techniques and instigated improvements in the training of medical staff, particularly midwives, and in the organisation and atmosphere of maternity wards. The article also briefly highlights continuities in the provision of maternity services in the UK regarding their enduring association with emotional neglect and trauma.
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