Nick,
These are great comments and I did not know the history of how women's labor pains were interpreted. That's remarkable.
You (and many classmates) focused on the few hours after birth in the hospital. To me the variation in hospital policies about physical separation at birth seem less impactful than the variation in access to financially secure maternity leave, which for most women in the US I believe is still 0 days, but for high SES women often 3 months or effectively a year.
Is there a reason you emphasize the hours after birth or you just happened to be thinking about that time period?
Maria