Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers... strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.

Rothman reframes childbirth as a transformative social and psychological process, not merely a biological event producing an infant. The quote emphasizes that birth can (and should) be an experience that builds maternal agency—cultivating confidence, competence, and trust in one’s embodied knowledge. Implicitly, it critiques models of maternity care that treat the pregnant person as a passive patient and prioritize institutional control or purely clinical outcomes over the mother’s autonomy and sense of power. In line with Rothman’s broader sociological work on reproduction and medicalization, the statement argues that how birth is managed shapes not only babies’ arrivals but also women’s identities, authority, and long-term relationship to their own capacities.