It has become improper in the modern world to have a baby without consulting medical experts. Even women who want to go against the tide and have babies at home seek doctors or midwives to attend them. Throughout most of history and in most cultures childbirth has not had, does not have, this medical aspect: those who manage childbirth are experienced women in the community. But in many places today having a first baby brings a woman into a direct encounter with medicine, probably the first or the most thorough she has had in her life. Pregnancy involves a series of visits to hospital or general practitioners, birth is a hospital affair, and the advisers on postnatal health and baby care are also experts. Child-rearing, like childbirth, has become a scientific field in the twentieth century. How people bring up their children has ceased to be simply one facet of social behaviour and has become instead a technical exercise. Certain practices are regarded by medical experts as correct, and it is the role of midwives, doctors and health visitors to spread the word among mothers. Moral virtues have become technical necessities: breastfeeding is scientifically superior to bottlefeeding, and not just a maternal duty; later, rather than earlier, toilet training is advised on grounds of what is known about the child's psychological development; and the innate moral superiority of cleanliness is overridden by the rational superiority of paediatric science.

These encounters with health professionals are a central theme in the transition to motherhood. How mothers feel about their health care has become an inseparable part of having and rearing a baby. Everybody knows that reproduction is a medical business, but not everybody feels the same way about it. The satisfactions and dissatisfactions mothers exhibit towards hospital doctors, GPs, midwives and health visitors, depend on the attitudes they have towards them.