中国古代稳婆群体的形成与发展由来已久。有清一代，稳婆群体在前中期与后期两个时段中呈现出不同的形象特征。清前中期，官方稳婆在宫廷中为后妃接生、主持洗三；在刑部与地方政府，被纳入官府固定人员编制中的稳婆负责检验女尸与女当事人，必要时还承担看管的工作。在民间，稳婆是育俗文化的象征。与清宫中类似，稳婆为产妇接生，完成洗三等诞生仪式；在福建、江西等溺女盛行的地区，稳婆还成为了溺女风俗的推进者与督促者。在清前中期文人的笔记小说、医家的医书中，稳婆群体往往呈现出愚昧、粗鲁、残忍的形象。

清后期，随着西方医学、生理、卫生等知识的传播，稳婆的群体形象在分娩场域与司法体系中身份发生嬗变。在分娩场域，旧法接生的弊端显现，稳婆被视为草菅人命的“杀人凶手”，被清政府所管控，陷入了舆论与“职场”的双重困境。在司法体系检验近代化的历程中，稳婆的职能虽得到延续，但其在检验工作中的话语权逐步降低。从时代转型的角度来看，稳婆群体形象嬗变的同时，其担任了时代转型过程中过渡者的角色。在政治视角、性别视角与中西医文化视角下，稳婆群体在清后期的持续活跃反映出传统思维的巨大惯性，也体现出其在近代化进程中所发挥的重要作用。

Midwife group's birth and development have a long history in ancient China. During the Qing Dynasty, midwives presented different images between the early and mid and late Qing Dynasty. In the early and mid Qing Dynasty, midwives who served on official duties had responsible for delivering babies for the imperial concubine and conducting the ceremony called Xisan in the Qing palace. In Ministry of Justice and local government, midwives who were regularly included in the official establishment took charge of examining, autopsying and guarding. In the folk, midwife group is a symbol of fertility customs.As the same as midwives in the Qing palace, civil midwives delivered babies and completed the birth ceremonies such as Xisan. In palaces like Fujian and Jiangxi Province where female infanticide was prevalent, midwives became the promoter and supervisor of female infanticide.Midwives was described as fatuous, crude and merciless figures in literary sketches and medicine books in the early and mid Qing Dynasty.

In the late Qing Dynasty, with the spread of western culture like medicine, physiology and hygiene, the image of midwife group in delivery places and justice system changed. In delivery places, along with the disadvantages of traditional techniques of delivery appeared, midwives who were regarded as killers were controlled by the Qing government, falling into a double-mess: public opinion and workplace. In the process of modernization of justice system, even though midwives' work continued, their discourse power gradually degraded. From the perspective of transformation of times, midwife group took on transitional role in the process of the transformation of times. Through the eyes of politics, gender conception, traditional Chinese and western medicine, midwives' persistence in the late Qing Dynasty reflected traditional thought inertia as well as their crucial part in modernization process.