Women's Decision-Making And Factors Affecting Their Choice Of ...

have their babies where they choose, and therefore the professional's job should
be to provide the woman with as much accurate and objective information as
possible, while avoiding personal bias and preference.
Although the Cumberlege committee addressed the issue of the safest
place to give birth, and referred to the reasons for and against hospital delivery,
the committee has been criticised for failing to take a decisive stand and offer
women their explicit support (Tew 1998).
As Chamberlain, Wraight, and Crowley (1997) have observed, the history
of the place of birth has been driven by opinion rather than being led by evidence.
Home birth used to be the only alternative; then other choices emerged often
supported by pressure groups of doctors who used the argument of safety. Each
side involved in the debate considers the other as obdurate and claim to represent
what is best for the women.
Summary
National Health Service (NHS) policy with regard to the place of birth was
considered important because successive committee recommendations resulted in
a situation where home birth was nearly phased out. However, the recent policy
aims to have a woman centred maternity service. The question for this thesis is
whether the view given by successive committees, which painted home birth as
unsafe and promoted the hospital as the safest place, could be seen to influence
the situation today. The question of the safety of home versus hospital birth has
been studied (Campbell and Macfarlane 1994; Tew 1977), and will therefore not
be the focus in this study. The main theoretical underpinning for the thesis is that
of risk perception, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
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