A national association with an extensive membership and international connections, a trade journal with wide circulation figures and a legally-defined occupational sphere protected by government regulations all represent major achievements within modern German midwifery. At the same time, achieving these markers of professional identity did not mean midwifery's function as a conduit between the public and private spheres disappeared. The actions of midwives continue to reflect dominant social norms into the modern period because childbirth remains a socially constructed process. While its biology is constant (women conceive, gestate and deliver), how a woman delivers (standing, sitting, flat on her back), where she delivers (home, hospital, clinic) and who attends (doctor, midwife, other) reflect the customs and values of the society in which they occur. As a result, even though German midwifery professionalized in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, practitioners still performed their function in accordance with the priorities and values of the larger society. This reflection of societal constructs is particularly evident in examining midwifery education. Education policies in general reveal both what a society holds as significant at a given moment and where that society wants to be in the future. Midwifery education intensifies this representation of norms because midwives already have historical precedent as agents of the administrative authority. Midwifery education consciously reflects the desire to protect the societal status quo.