Date of Award
Summer 2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
First Advisor
Alison Clark Efford
Second Advisor
Kristen Foster
Third Advisor
Peter Staudenmaier
Abstract
This dissertation compares the occupational development of midwifery in the United States and Germany between the 1850s and the 1920s. It examines how midwifery in nineteenth-century Germany developed into an early paraprofession through its inclusion in the paramedical division of labor and the creation of professional associations and a trade journal. In the United States, by contrast, such a development did not occur. Instead, physicians excluded midwives from the emerging paramedical division of labor. Even though a dedicated group of German American physicians and midwives attempted to replicate the German model of midwifery in St. Louis, Missouri, this paraprofessional form of midwifery failed to take root in the United States. American physicians’ unwillingness to incorporate midwifery into the paramedical division of labor prevented a development similar to that found in most European countries. When the question of midwives’ future position in American health care reemerged in the early twentieth century, midwives’ close association with immigrant communities further hindered paraprofessionalization and led American health experts to frame midwifery primarily as a public health problem. Drawing on German and American sources, particularly midwifery journals, this dissertation contributes to the historiography of midwifery by offering a new framework for understanding the decline of midwifery in the United States. At the same time, it highlights the efforts of educated immigrant midwives to replicate the German model in the United States and examines how their transnational experiences and connections shaped their understanding of themselves, their profession, and other women working in the same field.