ENJOYING THE INTERVAL

Reiger presents a biography of Murray Enkin, a Canadian obstetrician who became a leading figure in the movement to reform maternity care.

Murray Enkin was born in 1924 in Toronto during a time of great controversy regarding maternity care—mortality rates for both pregnant women and their babies were terrifyingly high, provoking demands from the public for reform. Enkin, a bookish and philosophically minded youngster, was effectively raised to advocate for progressive change—he attended the experimental Blatz School as a boy, which encouraged the development of personal responsibility and independent thinking rather than submission to rules. Years later, after becoming an obstetrician, he proposed radical innovations in his field, including prenatal classes for mothers and advocacy for a more natural approach to childbirth that assigned an elevated role to midwives. Enkin’s overarching philosophy—lucidly captured by the author—emphasized the human elements of childbirth, acknowledging the autonomy of mothers and the importance of their own preferences and perceiving childbirth holistically as an “emotional, sexual, and social experience.” In Enkin’s own words, “The aim of obstetrical care is to achieve the physical, emotional, and social health of the mother, the child, and the family, and to find a means of delivering that optimal care to all who need it.” With breathtaking thoroughness, Reiger chronicles Enkin’s contributions to the notion of “family centered maternity care” and the ways in which his support of the idea ultimately exerted an international influence. The author’s account can be gratuitously granular—this biography at times reads like a dryly narrated curriculum vitae, and it is easy for the reader to become numbed by the swarm of organizational acronyms. The reader may also question whether it was necessary for Reiger to devote so much space to Enkin’s personal life. Nevertheless, this is a captivating picture of the reform movement in maternity care (and Enkin’s deeply important contributions to it), presented with impressive scholarly scrupulousness.

A remarkably comprehensive biography of a central figure in the health care debates of the 20th century.