"Pushing for Midwives is a fascinating, richly analytical ethnography. Craven shows how class, especially, continues to create profoundly different orientations to reproductive politics, `respectability,' consumerism, consumers' rights, activism, and power. Pushing for Midwives provides a wonderful array of voices to help us consider the challenges of organizing for adequate reproductive health care today."---Rickie Solinger, author of Pregnancy and Power and Beggars and Choosers
"This excellent book accomplishes Craven's dual goals of writing a history of women's reproductive rights activism and describing contemporary `consumer rights' strategies within the politics of the natural childbirth movement, which has failed to appropriately address race and class disparities. A must-read for anyone wanting to understand how to advocate more effectively for all women and the midwives women need to fully achieve their reproductive rights!"---Robbie Davis-Floyd, Ph.D., author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage and co-editor of Mainstreaming Midwives
"Pushing for Midwives shows how the resurgence of home birth is a local story crosscut by broader forces of race, class, and professional power. With impressive command of related scholarship and keen attention to the hazards and possibilities of living---and birthing---as `consumers' under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism, Craven writes with a clarity that will appeal to a wide diversity of readers."---Pamela E. Klassen, University of Toronto, author of Blessed Events and Pathologies of Modernity
"In her beautifully rendered study of midwifery in Virginia, Craven shows how the rhetoric of `consumer choice'---a shibboleth of those promoting reproductive rights for women---excludes large segments of the childbearing population. In the best tradition of anthropology, she unpacks an irony, illustrating how our social and economic environment can simultaneously celebrate and constrain women's choices. Great stuff."---Raymond De Vries, Professor, Bioethics/Sociology/Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan, and author of A Pleasing Birth
Industry Reviews
"Craven makes a convincing case for her claim that a continued commitment to expanding reproductive justice is dependent on finding ways to see, and then to ameliorate, the race and class prejudices that lurk, thinly veiled, below the surface of the push for midwives. The most important contribution of this book is the author's sophisticated and nuanced historical discussion of factors that have shaped struggles over reproductive healthcare in the Unites States." American Journal of Sociology "[A] great example of feminist ethnography. [Craven's] open discussion of balancing her own personal commitment to homebirth activism with her academic interest in midwifery is a useful model for other feminist scholars. Craven's ethnography gives an insight into the lives of homebirth activists in Virginia, where there still remains substantially less written about the experiences and voices of low-income women. She is successful in creating a text which is accessible to many audiences, including homebirth and reproductive rights activists, scholars, and students...Pushing for Midwives provides a thoughtful critique of how the ideology of consumer rights is impacting homebirth activism." Association for Feminist Anthropology "[Craven] masterfully deploys contextual analysis, incisive critique, and accessible language to engage readers who might be more interested in the status of or struggle for midwifery elsewhere, grassroots organizing, and/or mothering studies...Thus, while Pushing for Midwives focuses on the state of Virginia, it offers broad insight into the medicalization of reproduction, the 're-birth' of midwifery, and grassroots organizing among diverse populations that support midwifery. The book is a welcome and timely addition to mothering studies and the anthropology of reproduction." Journal of the Motherhood Initiative Volume 2, Number 1 "Christa Craven has set out to provide a rich history of women's reproductive healthcare activism in the United States, and to explore current strategies employed in organizing for reproductive rights - access to midwifery care central amongst them...[Her] book offers a detailed historical analysis of the reproductive rights movement in the United States... Craven does an excellent job of maintaining a sense of the multiple 'histories' of midwifery... Craven's book makes an important contribution to critical analyses of the growth of midwifery in the United States - embedding a strong analysis of social class into reflections of the politics of making change." American Ethnologist "Pushing for Midwives might be used as a template of feminist-activist scholarship for those desiring to produce it in the future... [A] taut, accessibly written, close study of a movement... Craven accomplishes what she set out to do, which was to write a nuanced, historically informed, possibly prescriptive ethnography of a complex social and political movement." American Anthropologist, December 2012 "This book offers valuable insight for research activists and scholars by adding to literature that seeks to understand how even good intentions can ultimately harm advocacy movements in the long run. For the feminist scholar, this book indicates that the current framing of reproductive rights under a consumer model serves to disenfranchise specific groups of women, whether intentionally or not. For students, Craven's book highlights a movement that is not strictly a religious or political issue. There are members who are pro-life, pro-choice, Republican, and Democrat and are able to work together toward a shared goal. Her writing is clear, her examples are thoroughly detailed, and her ideas would serve to stimulate students at a variety of academic levels... Craven makes a compelling argument for reframing the reproductive rights movement specifically and details a troubling historical pattern of socioeconomic-based rhetorical tactics. More broadly, she offers a cautionary lens through which to analyze the vocabulary and tactics in activist rhetoric that potentially serve to silence those they claim to help." - Women's Studies in Communication
