Editing Midwifery (section)

====Contemporary====
At late 20th century, midwives were already recognized as highly trained and specialized professionals in obstetrics. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the medical perception of pregnancy and childbirth as potentially pathological and dangerous still dominates Western culture. Midwives who work in hospital settings also have been influenced by this view, although by and large they are trained to view birth as a normal and healthy process. While midwives play a much larger role in the care of pregnant mothers in Europe than in America, the medicalized model of birth still has influence in those countries, even though the World Health Organization recommends a natural, normal and humanized birth.<ref name="Fortaleza declaration">{{cite web|date=22–26 April 1985|title=Fortaleza Declaration: Appropriate Use of Technology for Birth|url=http://www.weikert.de/alexandra/who1.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200216130822/http://www.weikert.de/alexandra/who1.html|archive-date=2020-02-16|access-date=2020-06-11|publisher=World Health Organization}}</ref>

The midwifery model of pregnancy and childbirth as a normal and healthy process plays a much larger role in Sweden and the Netherlands than the rest of Europe, however. Swedish midwives stand out, since they administer 80 percent of prenatal care and more than 80 percent of family planning services in Sweden. Midwives in Sweden attend all normal births in public hospitals and Swedish women tend to have fewer interventions in hospitals than American women. The Dutch [[List of countries by infant and under-five mortality rates|infant mortality rate]] is one of the lowest rate in the world, at 4.0 deaths per thousand births, while the United States ranked twenty-second. Midwives in the Netherlands and Sweden owe a great deal of their success to supportive government policies.<ref name="Lingo 2004">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3402800303.html |last=Lingo |first=Alison Klairmont |author-link=Alison Klairmont |title=Obstetrics and Midwifery § Midwifery from 1900 to the Present |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society |date=2004 |publisher=Gale |place=Farmington Hills, MI |access-date=June 28, 2015 |postscript=none |archive-date=July 1, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150701033459/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3402800303.html |url-status=live }}, from ''Encyclopedia.com''.</ref>