Talk:Midwives in the United States

Student proposes addition
Hello everyone! I am planning on doing some edits to this page as a part of an educational assignment for a college class. I see that there has been previous discussion about nurse-midwives versus midwives and the relevance of their inclusion on this page. I am hoping to add something to this page about both types of midwives, as they exist as granny midwives. “Granny midwives” is a term used to reference African American midwives, particularly in the South.

I plan to change the “Qualifications” section of the “Midwives in the United States” article by retitling it “Categories”. Then, I will add a subsection titled “Granny midwife”. Under the subsection “Granny midwife” I intend to add three sub-subsections: “History,” “Training,” and “Practices.” The “History” sub-subsection will likely be the longest because there is information on granny midwives that dates from colonial and slavery times in the United States.

These changes will not only add to the clarity of the article but will provide a greater diversity of knowledge on Wikipedia as a whole. African American midwives in the South were and are pillars of community and necessities of life. Despite this significance, granny midwives and African American midwives in the South are absent from Wikipedia. There is brief mention of the frequency of midwifery use among African Americans and the poor on the “Nurse midwives in the United States” Wikipedia page, but this mention does not detail that the midwives themselves were African American.

That granny midwives are completely absent from the “Midwives in the United States” page is reflective of a whitewashing of history. Because of their significance to American culture and history, granny midwives deserve recognition on this page. Including a subsection on them will combat the erasure of African Americans from this and other accounts of United States history and its present day reality. Finally, the history and legacy of granny midwives is essential to understanding the state of African American maternal health outcomes today. Thus, granny midwives should be added to this page.

While I have found a wealth of literature on this topic I believe that more exists. If anyone has any recommendations for sources about this topic I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you.

MCRU (talk) 21:20, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that it would be interesting to add the information as part of the history of the midwives in the United States, but in the article "Midwives in the United States" and in the "History" section, not in the "Qualifications" section (which you want to replace with the title "categories") or article "Midwives" (where the current qualifications should appear). That's for clarity in the article and for respect to the consensuated structure by various contributors. Regards.
 * --190.234.106.108 (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I note that all reference to Certified Nurse Midwives has been removed from this page, and from the world Midwife page, and only direct entry midwife types are mentioned here. The reasoning seems to be that, as they trained as nurses before they trained as midwives, they not really a midwife. I disagree with this logic. It is correct that they are an advanced nursing specialization and they don’t usually operated as autonomous practitioners in the way Certified Professional Midwives do. However, they are a type of midwife none the less. More so I would suggest than lay midwives (but not to depreciate that type of midwife). They outnumber CPMs by about 4 to 1 and can operate in every state. It is illegal to operate as a CPM in some states (although this is changing). They do have their own page. However, they should have their own section on this page with the same standing as CPMs and the other midwifery types. Cheers. Ghipeb (talk) 03:10, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. if it is true they don’t usually operated as autonomous practitioners in the way Certified Professional Midwives do, however, they are a type of midwife. I include their description. --190.233.230.241 (talk) 00:42, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments on expanded contribution
Hi MCRU, great job with your most recent edits to this article. The "granny midwife" section is very comprehensive, and you added a considerable amount of new information on the history of midwives and on their training. Overall, your contribution is clearly and concisely written with much attention payed to being neutral. Have you thought about adding information on midwives in relation to gender and class? Also, I think it would be helpful to have a section explaining the arguments for and against having a midwife (versus a "traditional doctor"). I look forward to reading your next contribution! CamilaKennedy (talk) 21:54, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

License vs. certfication
Hi --

It seems that we have some things tangled up in the Licensure section. My understanding is that there are three types of professional certifications that a midwife can achieve in pursuit of being licensed by a particular state. Seems like we should have a certification section and a license section to explain this. Does this make sense? Where should granny midwives go? Chris vLS (talk) 02:04, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Student Wikipedia
Hello, I made a few changes with up-to-date information on this article for my Wikipedia English class. Starting with adding a statistics section to show how much midwives makes in different states in the U.s. and adding a brief history section on how it came to the U.S. I also just added a few small edits to the article that I had noticed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:KamiEHornberger/Midwives_in_the_United_States/Bibliography?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_bibliography — Preceding unsigned comment added by KamiEHornberger (talk • contribs) 01:14, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2015 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 17:24, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Article issues

 * Now that the English class and Ambassador Programs are over, the article needs to be rewritten. The Granny midwife and "History" subsection could use more sourcing. -- Otr500 (talk) 20:31, 17 August 2023 (UTC)