Mary Breckinridge, the Frontier Nursing Service and the Introduction of Nurse-Midwifery in the United States*

Abstract

The history of the establishment and early work of the Frontier Nursing Service illustrates some of the difficulties nurse-midwifery has faced in the United States and sheds light on the question of why professional midwifery continues to be a relatively little known system Of maternity care. Mary Breckinridge founded the Frontier Nursing Service at a time when physicians, public health officials, and social reformers were engaged in a well-publicized debate over the causes of and remedies for America's high maternal and infant death rates. She was herself a nurse and a trained midwife. When Breckinridge returned to the United States late in 1921, she began a systematic program of preparation for introducing nurse-midwifery to this country. In the summer of 1925, two nurse-midwives, Edna Rochstroh and Freda Caffin, settled in Hyden, Both had worked as nurses with the Maternity Center Association of New York City, and taken their midwifery training in England.