Paradigms in obstetric nursing

Abstract

The course of childbirth care practice in England and in the United States of America can be described by focusing on the relationship between the incipient nursing profession and the traditional profession of midwife, throughout the XVIIIth and the XIXth centuries. This paper proposes the study of such a relationship by adopting the Greek mythology goddesses as archetypical figures of female behavior. It relates the nurse to the goddess Athena, protector of the arts, the cities, the patriarchal values, the status quo-the personification of the father's daughter archetype-and the traditional midwife to Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the moon, protector of the wilderness, the weak, and the young-the personification of the great sister archetype. Under such a perspective, it deals with the decline of the traditional midwife practice in those countries. Finally, it poses the question of the obstetrics nursing pattern as something to be constituted in conformity and in complicity with the women's organized movement and their claims in the field of health.