CHILDBIRTH ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES 1880-1930

One of the issues faced by families who migrated to the Canadian prairies during the settlement years was the lack of affordable and accessible health care practitioners to assist women during pregnancy and childbirth. Maternal and infant mortality rates on the prairies during the first decades of the twentieth century bear witness to the risks which homestead women were forced to take to deliver their children and the primitive conditions in which many childbirths took place. In this article, homestead women's personal accounts of their childbirth experiences are blended with analysis of the social and political environment in which proposed solutions to this serious social problem were addressed.