Editing Childbirth (section)

=== Role of males ===
Historically, women have been attended and supported by other women during labour and birth. Midwife training in European cities began in the 1400s, but rural women were usually assisted by female family or friends.<ref name=":0" /> However, it was not simply a ladies' social bonding event as some historians have portrayed – fear and pain often filled the atmosphere, as death during childbirth was a common occurrence.<ref name=":1" /> In the United States before the 1950s, a father would not be in the birthing room. It did not matter if it was a [[home birth]]; the father would be waiting downstairs or in another room in the home. If it was in a hospital, then the father would wait in the waiting room.<ref>{{cite book |last=Leavitt |first=Judith W. |title=Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750–1950 |date=1988 |publisher=University of Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-505690-7 |pages=90–91}}</ref> Fathers were only permitted in the room if the life of the mother or baby was severely at-risk. In 1522, a German physician was sentenced to death for sneaking into a delivery room dressed as a woman.<ref name=":0" />

The majority of guidebooks related to pregnancy and childbirth were written by men who had never been involved in the birthing process.{{according to whom|date=March 2021}} A Greek physician, [[Soranus of Ephesus]], wrote a book about obstetrics and gynaecology in the second century, which was referenced for the next thousand years. The book contained endless home remedies for pregnancy and childbirth, many of which would be considered heinous by modern women and medical professionals.<ref name=":0" />