Mila Kunis recently announced that she will be giving birth naturally, saying “I did this to myself – I might as well do it right.” By “natural,” Kunis means that she will be using a midwife when she gives birth and opting out of the hospitalized, medically-induced birthing experience that dominates in American society today. Kunis is just one, albeit highly publicized, instance in a larger move away from the hospitalized birthing experience to “home birth.” However, this shift is not without its conflicts, and Kunis’ statement that natural birth is “doing it right” points to deeper societal perceptions of the right way to give birth and how those perceptions of what is “natural” might be changing.

The media often frames this increase in home births as potentially dangerous and problematic, but women were giving birth at home long before they started going to hospitals. The medicalized model of childbirth is a fairly recent product of a larger shift in societal acceptance of professional science over local knowledge.

• Charlotte Borst. 1995. Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Robbie E. Davis-Floyd. 2003. Birth as an American Rite of Passage. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

This “medicalization of childbirth” has huge impacts on how society, and women themselves, see women’s bodies and safety. Sociologists argue that this increased medical monitoring during pregnancy is a form of social control that constrains women both physically and emotionally.

• Katherine Beckett and Bruce Hoffman. 2005. “Challenging Medicine: Law, Resistance, and the Cultural Politics of Childbirth.” Law and Society Review 39(1): 125-170
• Kerreen Reiger and Rhea Dempsey. 2006. “Performing Birth in a Culture of Fear: An Embodied Crisis of Late Modernity.” Health Sociology Review 15(4).
• Karin Martin. 2003. “Giving Birth Like a Girl.” Gender and Society 17(1): 54-72.

For a great history of homebirth and the reproductive rights movement, check out Christa Craven’s 2010 book Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement.