I've read quite a bit of the book by Laura Kaplan Shanley and thought it was amazing. Scary, but also fascinating and she really impressed me. She's very honest about her experiences, eg she had one of her children removed from her care for a while by social services, also one of her babies died soon after birth. Also I don't think it's a 'typical' experience that a woman can give birth on her own at home, leave the placenta in a bathtub and head off for a walk immediately afterwards with the new baby. But don't you all think it's amazing that there are women out there who can do it? I doubt that any of them can be considered 'recklessly stupid'; they do after all have nine months to plan and prepare for the event, do their research and weigh up the risks. And they are all women who revel in birth and motherhood, while all their babies are very much wanted: do you seriously think that they are wantonly putting their unborn children at risk? Also you have to bear in mind that most are American moms and the medical care of expectant/birthing mothers over there is in many ways much worse than over here (read 'Misconceptions' by Naomi Wolf), especially for those who have opted out of society.
This is not a route that I would choose for myself, but I do tend to think, "good for them". They are rarely completely alone (dps/dhs are present in case of emergency) and I doubt that if they had any kind of major problems during pregnancy, they wouldn't reassess their plans. To be honest the prospect of a hospital birth fills me with fear: the rate of sections (apparently approaching 1 in 4), episiotomy, infection, drugs etc, and if I was confident enough about birth, had experienced it before, and if my pregnancy had progressed normally, I can honestly see the appeal of doing it on my own - why, after all, do we expect birth to be such a massive physical and mental trauma?
When my gran had her second child (my father), she went into labour on the Thursday, and he wasn't born until the following Tuesday. This was the 1940s and it was unusual to have hospital deliveries. If her experience happened today, intervention would be almost guaranteed. She had a midwife with her for most of her labour, who slept in the same bed, and massaged her back so much that a hole was rubbed in my gran's nightie. Towards the end a doctor was called to attend; he tied a towel onto the end of the bed and told my gran to pull on it as she delivered. And so it was: a good 5 day labour, no pain relief, no intervention, minimal medical supervision. Perhaps if women were offered this happy medium of birth - ie relaxed and empowered in familiar surroundings with the bare minimum of outside interference, certainly no dissociated 'experts' around advising or even pushing pethidine, epidural, sections, forceps, episiotomy etc - then perhaps fewer women would be pushed towards the other extreme of unassisted childbirth.