Revisiting the history of neonatal care: Maternal, nursing, and caregiving labor in historical narratives
Global Pediatrics, cilt.18, 2026 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 18
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.gpeds.2026.100390
- Dergi Adı: Global Pediatrics
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Besim Ömer, Family-centered care, History of neonatology, Incubator, Maternal labor, Ottoman empire, Pierre Budin
- İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa Adresli: Evet
Özet
Background: Before the hospital era, mothers, midwives, and nurses cared for sick or premature infants at home. As neonatal medicine moved this care into the hospital, an influential origin narrative named the physician and the apparatus but gave little recognition to the caregiving woman. This narrative is an anecdote first recorded in 1667 (the earliest source identified here), popularized by Sterne in 1759, and reproduced by Budin. Method: This narrative historiographic analysis follows the anecdote's citation lineage through Budin's preface to an 1888 Ottoman monograph by Besim Ömer, Budin's own Le Nourrisson, and a 1977 Pediatrics article, and extends it to Hess's textbooks. Each is read for whose labor it credits and whose it leaves unnamed. Results: In these sources, the physician, and occasionally the father, receives credit; the mother, midwife, and nurse generally do not. The 1667 source shows that the mother and wet-nurse were written out in transmission. The Ottoman monograph re-articulates the narrative in another medical setting. Madame Henry, the midwife who secured funding for the Paris Maternité's premature-infant pavilion, resigned when it came under medical direction. Counterexamples, including Lundeen's co-authorship and Besim Ömer's work for midwives, locate the pattern in attribution practices rather than individual attitudes. Illustrative trials of Family Integrated Care and kangaroo mother care report infant and parental benefits, yet implementation and parental support remain uneven. Conclusion: Family-centered care restores parental presence at the bedside, but presence is not attribution. Experimental artificial-womb technology raises a design question: whether parental presence and caregiving will be integral or optional.