Communicating a New Consciousness: Countercultural Print and the Home Birth Movement in the 1970s

summary:

This essay analyzes the production of three influential home birth texts of the 1970s written by self-proclaimed lay midwives that helped to fuel and sustain a movement in alternative birth practices. As part of a countercultural lifestyle print culture, early “how-to” books (Raven Lang’s The Birth Book, Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery) provided readers with vivid images and accounts in stark contrast to those of the sterile hospital delivery room. By the end of the decade, Rahima Baldwin’s more mainstream guidebook, Special Delivery, indicated an interest in translating home birth to a wider audience who did not necessarily identify as “countercultural.” Lay midwives who were authors of radical print texts in the 1970s played an important role in reshaping expectations about the birth experience, suggesting a need to rethink how we define the counterculture and its legacies.