Home births up, driven by natural-birth subculture

ATLANTA (AP) — Home births rose 20 percent over four years, government figures show, reflecting what health experts say is a small subculture among white women toward natural birth.

Fewer than 1 percent of U.S. births occur at home. But the proportion is clearly going up, a study by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. The new figures are for 2004 to 2008. Home births had been declining from 1990 to 2004.

The increase was driven by white women — 1 in 98 had their babies at home in 2008, the most recent year for which the statistics were available.

Only about 1 in 357 black women give birth at home, and just 1 in 500 Hispanic women do.

"I think there's more of a natural birth subculture going on with white women - an interest in a low-intervention birth in a familiar setting," said the lead author, Marian MacDorman of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

For all races combined, about 1 in 143 births were at home in 2008, up from 1 in 179 in 2004.