On my recent video, The Poulos Triplets, I explained that husbands weren’t allowed to stay with their wives during labor or delivery, so despite probably knowing Nora was carrying more than one baby, fainting still not uncalled for when he learned all were safe and well.

I don’t get many comments because my channel is very tiny but I got one on that video disagreeing about husbands being allowed to stay with their wives. Its not just that they were misinformed, believing that they were allowed, but that they presumed it was being raised ignorant that influenced expectant fathers to voluntarily abandon their wives in labor. For themselves, they were eager to not only support their partner in labor but to take an active role in catching their baby.

Certainly there are exceptions to every rule, but the rule was in the US during the first half of the 20th century, most doctors (during homebirths) and most hospitals prohibited men from remaining with their wives during labor or delivery, and even afterward. I suspect this started with good intentions. First was the risk of infection, and second, I believe, was the use of pain relief drug scopoline. I am still doing research on this subject, but most women who wanted to use twilight sleep, needed to do so in a hospital where there were enough people to monitor the patient. However, this monitoring must also be very quiet, the more noise, light, movement around the patient, the more likely they were to get violent. Special beds were developed to enclose the laboring but semi-conscious woman, all tied up and tied down to the bed with the lights lowered, no interaction between medical staff and the patient and no visitors. Not all hospitals were willing or able to provide this service, they couldn’t ensure a quiet secluded laboring area or didn’t have enough medical personnel to monitor the dosing and progress of the women. But many did, and I believe even after twilight sleep was out of fashion (by the late 1910s) and alternative pain relief was introduced, the traditions of the twilight sleep era L & D remained: women were isolated during labor and often tied down, at least during delivery.

As hospital births became ubiquitous and the baby boom began, many maternity wards weren’t fit for purpose. Nurses were overworked and under qualified, doctors dehumanized their patients, and the combination of thee two with traditional obstetric practices led to abuse and mortality. As I covered in the Sadism in the Delivery Room Pt 1 & 2 | Ladies Home Journal 1958 | Read Along, by the 1950s the situation was untenable, and one of the demands of women were that their husbands should be allowed to stay with them. If the laboring woman had their partner with them, they would be less frightened, he could help sooth them, and most importantly, husbands wouldn’t stand for the kind of physical, sexual, and verbal abuses many women reported.

The first example I used in the video was from A Baby Is Born published in 1938. It features a homebirth, which was attended by a nurse and an a medical doctor. The full length video goes through basic birds and bees information, then follows the first time expectant mother as her pregnancy progresses, including her prenatal appointments. Then we see the childbirth and neonatal care. /sarcasm font/ Back in 1938, placentas apparently weren’t invented yet, which I find fascinating.

When the doctor arrives and confirms the labor is underway, he leaves his nurse to prepare the room and the mother for delivery, while he goes down to chat with the husband about how he’d love to have a local maternity hospital.

“When its almost time for the delivery, the couple would go to the hospital, where a trained nurse would take charge of the expectant mother and the husband would be regulated to a separate room. All husbands do get in the way sometimes […] The expectant father is rather useless at this stage of the game, sits and sits.”

The nurse comes down to say the delivery is ready, the husband and doctor approach the stairs but the doctor turns and tell him, “You wait here, if we need you we’ll let you know.”

The husband eventually makes his way to the top of the stairs, pacing in his anxiety. If he had been allowed, he would have stayed with his wife. After the baby has been born, cleaned up and dressed, the nurse brings the baby out to the father to look at, he asks about his wife, “How’s Mary? Can I see her?”

The nurse replies, “No. Not yet. But the doctor will be through in just a few moments.” The nurse takes the baby, who the father wasn’t even allowed to hold, back into the room with her and shuts the door.

The next example, was from another informational video, Labor and Childbirth out of San Francisco in 1950. This one takes place at a hospital, were the couple checks in, the wife is taken away and the husband is taken to an office to fill out forms and pay for the birth. The video then shifts to the laboring woman, all the things that will be done to her (no questions, no options) straight through to the birth of the baby. The husband, we must assume, was stuck in that office filling out paperwork the entire time because he was never mentioned again. Legend has it, he is still there to this day.

The last example was from pop culture to show how firmly engrained the idea was, From I Love Lucy, season two episode sixteen, Lucy is in labor, she and Ricky have arrived at the hospital and a nurse takes Lucy’s suitcase and tells Ricky, “Oh you’ll have to say goodbye to your wife down here, you’re not allowed upstairs.” They don’t argue, though they look sad and afraid and reluctant to part. Yet, for them and I assume a large percentage of their audience, this was simply the way things were done. Ricky goes to a waiting room just for fathers with an observation window, just as we saw in Arris Poulos’s photo. Ricky paces, smokes, struggles to make small talk with an older man who’s nonplussed by yet another baby (six daughters already). Should a character like Ricky, hypervigilant about his wife and baby, have been allowed to stay with them, he would have.

Another example I thought about using but it would have made the video too long was from the 1931 film, Bad Sister. (Spoilers ahead) The eldest daughter gets pregnant from a one night stand and to save face, she marries a kind but stupid man who believes he is the father. Because bad girls can’t win, she dies during childbirth. The kind but stupid man is very anxious about her, along with her mother, father, and siblings who are all gathered around the nursery window. If any of them had been allowed to stay with her they would have, but because they weren’t allowed, they never got to say goodbye to her.

This is why I assert that father’s weren’t allowed to be with their wives during labor and delivery. Some of them (husbands and wives) may have preferred this, even today when it is normal for husbands to remain with and support their wives through labor and delivery, some men won’t. A somewhat recent high profile example to me was PewDiePie, he didn’t even get out of the car to walk his wife? girlfriend? to to the door of the hospital. She had to carry her own backpack. Then he went home and played games (not for work) and fell asleep. He even had the audacity to publicly post how there was a serious medical problem with her at the hospital and he felt lucky to have slept through it– it would have inconvenienced him. The point is he didn’t even have his notifications on in case the hospital called him. He was self-centered and without sympathy even when he did show up.

So, No. I don’t believe that lack of involvement in labor and delivery is a generational issue, that men back then were raised ignorant, I think it has more to do with individual personalities (and perhaps personality disorders) and well as quality of the relationship.