BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

Marion Yang and the First National Midwifery School transformed the reputation of
midwifery in China from a back-alley vocation to a modern profession, and served as a model
for future CCP maternal and child health programs. Numerous works by Westerners and
Chinese alike vilified the old-style midwife, while Yang, working as a bridge between the
foreign, private FNMS and the Nationalist government, renovated the mechanics of midwifery
and the women who practiced it. Yang and the FNMS were instrumental in the
professionalization of childbirth.
It is clear that Western prenatal and obstetrical care improved maternal and infant
mortality rates in China. On the other hand, childbirth became a more impersonal and
medicalized experience, removed from the family and larger community. In the midst of these
changes, a new profession emerged. Young, modern zhuchanshi replaced the old-style
jieshengpo. Furthermore, the reluctance of Chinese women to patronize male physicians or
attend male patients spurred the quick rise of women entering the medical professions, especially
nursing, midwifery, obstetrics/gynecology, and pediatrics. Childbirth had become a serious
business, no longer a function of merely reproducing the family. In Republican China, modern
childbirth was part of a larger movement to improve the health of the country’s citizens. How
did this new medical infrastructure affect and influence women who entered the midwifery field?
What happened to the old-style midwives as the profession grew and they were displaced by
younger, trained contemporaries? I now turn to examine the development of this new and
modern profession.
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