Using fathers' first-hand accounts from letters, journals, and
personal interviews along with hospital records and medical
literature, Judith Walzer Leavitt offers a new perspective on the
changing role of expectant fathers from the 1940s to the 1980s. She
shows how, as men moved first from the hospital waiting room to the
labor room in the 1960s, and then on to the delivery and birthing
rooms in the 1970s and 1980s, they became progressively more
involved in the birth experience and their influence over events
expanded. With careful attention to power and privilege, Leavitt
charts not only the increasing involvement of fathers, but also
medical inequalities, the impact of race and class, and the
evolution of hospital policies. Illustrated with more than seventy
images from TV, films, and magazines, this book provides important
new insights into childbirth in modern America, even as it reminds
readers of their own experiences.