Historical Precedence for Women Giving Birth Alone

According to Dr. Charlotte G. Borst, author of Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth 1870-1920 (1995), "there is no historical precedent" for women giving birth alone (as quoted in the New York Times, May 7, 2002). Apparently Dr. Borst neglected to read Judith Goldsmith's 1990 book, Childbirth Wisdom From the World's Oldest Societies. Goldsmith compiled the accounts of scientists, anthropologists and historians who had observed tribal births over the last 400 years. She makes many references to the fact that tribal women often delivered their own babies:

There were numerous societies where women gave birth with no assistance at all. Among the Chukchee of Siberia, for example, where babies were born with little trouble, the birthing woman attended completely to her own needs and those of her newborn infant. She cut the umbilical cord and disposed of the placenta herself. During the birth, the only other person present was an older woman, who aided the mother in the case of absolute necessity....The Fulani woman of Africa also birthed without expecting any assistance, catching the infant as it was born in her own hands.

In 1791, a traveler among the Guina women of South America noted that if an Indian woman went into labor while on "the march," she simply stepped aside, caught the baby and ran in haste after the others. In West Africa around 1800 a doctor observed that a delivery was often conducted without a single attendant or without its being known to anyone.

An English settler observed a New Zealand woman working in the fields in 1869. The woman walked a short distance alone, gave birth to her child and returned to work two hours later. Two hundred years ago if a North American Native woman went into labor while traveling by canoe, she would ask to be put ashore, go into the woods alone, return shortly with her baby and resume paddling. Among the Maria Gonds of India, Goldsmith writes, there are no midwives. "It is assumed that the mother will do everything for herself."

And from Sheila Kitzinger (Rediscovering Childbirth) -

Women of the tribal people in the Kalahari desert of Botswana and Namibia in southern Africa are exceptional in that with their second and subsequent births they do not expect help from other women during birth. Yet they, too, see birth as a transforming experience which draws on spiritual energy. They are proud of giving birth out of doors, in the bush, alone. While men dare death by going into trances and hunting antelope, women accept responsibility for birth. They believe that the only enemy is fear. Women aim to enter a "powerful altered state of consciousness, one in which great learning and personal growth are possible" (1). The solitary birth experience is seen as an important process in maturation, in becoming an adult able to be powerful, responsive and productive....In West Africa, among the Bariba of the People's Republic of Benin, unassisted, solitary birth is also the ideal.

(1) Biesele, M., "An ideal of Unassisted Birth" in Davis-Floyd, R.E. & Sargent, C.F. (eds), Chilbirth and Authoritative Knowledge, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997, p. 485.