Health Policy and Provision for Maternity Care in the United Kingdom in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Examining changes in maternity care policy can help demonstrate how women bring about real changes in their own and their families’ health care. Over the twentieth century, public provision of maternity services in the United Kingdom was driven by a combination of policy influences, particularly by concerns about mortality in children and women. The result has been a highly centralized, medicalized and ‘technological’ service for pregnancy and childbirth care. However, since the 1970s, women campaigners, health care professionals and researchers have highlighted the need for services to take fuller account of the role of women in decision-making, both about their own lives and in public life (Garcia et al., 1990; Oakley, 1981). In England, the government’s Changing Childbirth initiative (Department of Health, 1993) raised the possibility that maternity care might be provided differently in the future.