ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a new professional project for midwives as they sought to engage with research and education in order to cement their role at the centre of maternity. It covers a period when the tone of the wider social debate around childbirth changed dramatically. The chapter is bisected by the Changing Childbirth Report of 1993 written by a government-appointed ‘Expert Maternity Group’, which was created as a result of the Report of the Health Select Committee published in 1992. It considers the reasons behind this and the legacy left by the Report. As well as altering the tone of the national discourse around birth, Changing Childbirth also impacted on the way in which midwifery viewed itself. By the late 1980s the profession—although there were debates as to whether it could even be described as such—was feeling increasingly beleaguered. The chapter presents the development and results of the Changing Childbirth Report on the wider landscape of maternity care.
