Women as Mothers

Sheila Kitzinger was born Sheila Helena Elizabeth Webster in Taunton, Somerset, England on March 29, 1929. She studied social anthropology at Ruskin and St Hugh's Colleges at Oxford. As an anthropologist, she encouraged women around the world to reclaim from doctors their natural prerogative over pregnancy and childbirth. Her first book, The Experience of Childbirth, was published in 1962. Her other works included Birth over Thirty, Woman's Experience of Sex, Breastfeeding Your Baby, Ourselves as Mothers, Becoming a Grandmother, Birth Crisis, Birth and Sex: The Power and the Passion, and A Passion for Birth. She created a Birth Crisis Network in Britain, which offers reflective listening for women traumatized after delivery. She died after a short illness on April 11, 2015 at the age of 86.