ABSTRACT
The preoccupation with labour progress and length reached its zenith with the development of the active management of labour protocol, which guarantees women a maximum labour length of no greater than 10 hours. Labour care in the birth centre illustrated examples of tangential activities that would probably not be provided or which would be ignored or cause irritation in many large hospitals. Variations in labour patterns also challenge the technocratic model of childbirth. Taylorist management was hierarchical, detached from worker activity, had a strong regulatory function, and was focused on product outcomes. Some of the data from midwives in this study indicate that Taylorist methods of organisational efficiency were used in the birth centre in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite this, post-Fordist and post-Taylorist models have struggled to gain a mainstream foothold in maternity care, because intrapartum provision continues to be primarily based in large, centrally located hospitals.
