'The Technocratic Model of Childbirth and a Study on the Machine Metaphor in Childbirth in Europe and North America' explores the history of the medicalisation of childbirth starting from 17th Century Cartesian mind-body dualism. Mind-body separation being the 'critical conceptual leap' that allowed the study of human anatomy through dissection and consequently, dissection as a tool for developing obstetrical knowledge about birth. The review explores the literature and imagery around this seismic cultural shift in birth at the advent of obstetrics (as an acceptable field of study for male physicians and surgeons) through the lavish obstetric atlases full of large-scale, colour engravings of the dissected female body; and considers the shift of birth from a social event wholly located within the domestic area to a hospital-based medical event supervised by medical practitioners. Through key texts by Robin Davis-Floyd, Emily Martin, Barbara Katz Rothman, Caroline Squire, Paula Treichler, Karen Newman and Evelyn Fox Keller, this review examines the biases, beliefs and core values of a medical system that profoundly shaped the dominant culture of childbirth in the West.

The core of this review focusses on the literature surrounding the origins of the language and terminology of childbirth and the use of the metaphor of the body as a machine within the context of birth. Imagery of the human body allied to a factory that manufactures human beings (Margaret Mead); an assembly-line production of goods (Robbie Davis-Floyd); and a woman's lower half like 'a birthing machine' (Alistair Hewison) or an 'untrustworthy machine' requiring the 'attention of a mechanic' (Ann Oakley) are part of a widely-documented arguments about the industrialization of hospital birth in the West. The review identifies influential critique of the medical model of birth as a culture of birth where women are alienated from their bodies during birth and from the active process of birth itself. As part of an exploration of texts that expand on the notion of the birthing body as an 'untrustworthy machine', I consider the work of Robbie Davis-Floyd who grounds the foundations of her argument in the Industrial Revolution when Western society sought to dominate and control nature.
Questioning the rejection of the medical model was also part of this review. Through the analysis of contemporary texts, most notably the work of Laura Purdy, Rebecca Kukla and Candace Johnson, I collect contemporary arguments, theories and questions around the rejection of the medical model.
Finally, I survey the literature around multiple meanings of 'control' within the technocratic model of birth: control during childbirth as referring to remaining in charge of personal behaviour and emotions (Davis-Floyd); the notion that 'losing control' during childbirth may be a product of an internalized sense of control rather than an institutional one (Karin Martin); social relationships of power and dominance in issues of choice, control and class for women in childbirth i.e. the culture of medicine as a powerful ideology, capable of controlling gestation and labour, rather than technologies themselves as the problem (Ellen Lazarus); the writing of birth plans by women in order to reclaim some control of their birth while remaining in hospital (Hensley Owens demonstrates the role of the internet in 'distributing feminist rhetorical agency'); and the questioning of an assumption that women desire (or should desire) control over the process of labour and delivery in hospital birth (Fox and Warts identify a tendency in the critique of the medicalization of childbirth to "overlook the agency of women who accept medical management of their births"…for some women, feeling 'in control' may mean birthing in a hospital surrounded by the latest technology). How the notion of 'control' is felt by women during their birth is fundamentally as important as what 'control' means in discourses around childbirth.