Davis-Floyd Robbie Birth as an American Rite of Passage

<P>This classic book, first published in 1992 and again in 2003, has inspired three generations of childbearing people, birth activists and researchers, and birth practitioners¿midwives, doulas, nurses, and obstetricians¿to take a fresh look at the "standard procedures" that are routinely used to "manage" American childbirth. It was the first book to identify these non-evidence-based obstetric interventions as rituals that enact and transmit the core values of the American technocracy, thereby answering the pressing question of <I>why</I> these interventions continue to be performed despite all evidence to the contrary. This third edition brings together Davis-Floyd''s insights into the intense ritualization of labor and birth and the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic models of birth with new data collected in recent years. </P>