Childbirth, Childcare, and Working-Class Women

Abstract

Expanding on the previous chapter, this chapter examines the efforts of voluntary groups, the Bombay Municipality, and Indian millowners to prevent infant mortality. These included campaigns to medicalize childbirth, establish crèches, and organize informal education in mothercraft for working-class women. Voluntary groups and the Bombay Municipality collaborated to appoint “scientifically” trained midwives and health visitors in working-class areas and created maternity homes in mill localities to reduce the dominance of “untrained” traditional midwives. Despite inadequate funds, the creation of infant welfare centers and an employer-funded maternity hospital accelerated the attempts to medicalize childbirth and provide antenatal and post natal care for working-class women and their infants. Simultaneously, the Bombay Baby and Health Week Association regularly organized Baby Weeks in the mill districts to showcase “appropriate” methods of infant care. These informal educational programs highlighted the role of mothercraft in making healthy working-class babies and deemphasized structural factors such as poverty and the lack of sanitary infrastructure that endangered infant health.