Out on a Limb: the Personal Mandate to Practise Midwifery by Midwives of the Domiciliary Midwives Society of New Zealand (Incorporated), 1974-1986.

Abstract

As an archival and oral herstory of domiciliary midwifery in New Zealand during 1974-1986 this research makes an original and significant contribution to midwifery knowledge both nationally and internationally. It explored the herstories of the Domiciliary Midwives Society (Incorporated) and eight of its midwives to reveal the exercising of the personal mandate to practise within the full scope of midwifery in the community during a time when all but a handful of midwives worked in the hierarchical and institutional structures of hospitals. The significant findings of this study included a new ‘with-woman’ process for positioning midwifery research, and gathering, analysing and expressing evidence. This process engages and embeds the philosophical underpinnings, process and method of home birth midwifery practice into the research process with the intention of breaking down barriers between these two midwifery activities. Further, this study evidenced the role midwifery played in medicine’s (and nursing’s) colonisation of midwifery in reframing the midwife’s identity as a nurse, imposing obstetric nursing standards of practice and diminishing the full scope of the midwife’s practice as a discipline separate from, and independent to nursing. Amongst considerations of this colonising process are the investigation of domiciliary midwifery undertaken by midwives of the New Zealand Nurses Association (NZNA) and Midwives and Obstetrical Nurses Special Interest Section (MSIS) of NZNA and the subsequent ‘Policy Statement on Home Confinement’ authored by MSIS in 1980. Thus, this thesis elaborates a dissenting view on the oppression of midwives by medicine in that midwifery created and exercised mechanisms to both ensure 100% hospitalization of childbirth during the study period and limitation of the domiciliary midwifery service. It is hoped that this study will provide a pathway for midwives to move fluidly between the practices of both research and midwifery, as well as ensuring that domiciliary midwifery herstory in New Zealand becomes secured.