Fathers today are steeped in the fine points of birth coaching and Lamaze, but once upon a time they had, literally, nothing to do with the event other than participating in the kickoff nine months earlier. As late as 1938 half of American women were still giving birth at home and men were, as they had been for thousands of years, unwelcome on the premises. The mother gathered her lady friends around her; the father was sent packing. In one charming bit of correspondence from the period, reproduced by Ms. Leavitt, a letter-writer observes how the womenfolk managed the event: “Mrs. Warren, who was absolute in this season of female despotism, interposed, and the happy father was compelled, with reluctant steps, to quit the spot.”

Present at the Creation – WSJ.com.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, has been making a resurgence in recent years as more parents decide not to vaccinate their children, says Jason Glanz, author of a study in today’s Pediatrics. In a study of 751 children enrolled in Kaiser Permanente of Colorado, one in 20 children who skipped the vaccine developed whooping cough, compared with one in 500 vaccinated children. In all, 11% to 12% of pertussis cases were in unvaccinated children.

Though more than 90% effective, the vaccine doesn’t protect everyone, says Sean O’Leary, an infectious-disease fellow at Children’s Hospital in Denver.

That’s why vaccinating all children is crucial to creating “herd immunity” for the entire community, including newborns who are too young to be immunized, O’Leary says.

A study in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal in March found that 91 babies under age 1 died of whooping cough from 1999 to 2004. More than half were under 2 months old, the age at which infants get their first in a series of whooping cough shots.

The Final Push: What a father does in the delivery room.