Women have long searched for a pleasing birth—a birth with a minimum of fear and pain, in the company of supportive family, friends, and caregivers, a birth that ends with a healthy mother and baby gazing into each other's eyes. For women in the Netherlands, such a birth is defined as one at home under the care of a midwife. In a country known for its liberal approach to drugs, prostitution, and euthanasia, government support for midwife-attended home birth is perhaps its most radical policy: every other modern nation regards birth as too risky to occur outside a hospital setting. In exploring the historical, social, and cultural customs responsible for the Dutch way of birth, Raymond De Vries opens a new page in the analysis of health care and explains why maternal care reform has proven so difficult in the U.S. He carefully documents the way culture shapes the organization of health care, showing how the unique maternity care system of the Netherlands is the result of Dutch ideas about home, the family, women, the body and pain, thriftiness, heroes, and solidarity. A Pleasing Birth breaks new ground and closes gaps in our knowledge of the social and cultural foundations of health care. Offering a view into the Dutch notion of maternity care, De Vries also offers a chance of imagining how Dutch practices can reform health care in the U.S. not just for mothers and babies, but for all Americans.

Raymond De Vries is Professor of Sociology at St. Olaf College and Visiting Professor at the Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota. He is the author or editor of seven previous books, including, Birth by Design: Pregnancy, Maternity Care, and Midwifery in North America and Europe.

"In this detailed and thoughtful study, De Vries does much more than introduce us to the peculiar maternity care system of the Netherlands; he forces us to reexamine our assumptions about the way health care systems are organized, and offers new, and revolutionary, ways to think about health care reform. This is sociological analysis at its best."—Charles L. Bosk, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania

"A Pleasing Birth provides the most comprehensive look yet into the history, the philosophy, the social attitudes, the structures, and the institutions that underlie the Dutch maternity care system. Raymond De Vries explains why and how health policymakers in the Netherlands continue to put such importance on midwifery, home birth, and everything needed to support them."—Ina May Gaskin, author of Ina May's Guide to Childbirth and Spiritual Midwifery

"De Vries provides the definitive work on the Dutch obstetrical system, showing how this system not only reflects strong cultural values, but also has become entirely evidence-based, pointing the way toward better birth for all nations. A Pleasing Birth is essential reading for social scientists, birth professionals, birth activists, and educated consumers—a masterpiece of insight!"—Robbie Davis-Floyd, Ph.D., author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage