To analyze the research status of the midwifery in China from 2012 to 2021, and to explore the research hotspots and research trends in the midwifery in China in the past 10 years.

The CiteSpace software was used to analyze the time distribution, authors, institutions and keywords of related studies in the field of midwifery published in nursing core journals in China. The search period was from January 2012 to December 2021.

A total of 442 articles were included, with the largest number of papers published in 2014 and 2015, and no increase in the number of papers published after 2016. The core author group in the field of midwifery was basically formed, with close cooperation among authors and high output from the five cooperative groups, but little cooperation among teams. Cooperative research with regional institutions began to take shape, and inter-regional collaborative research was relatively scarce. The hotspot keywords in the field of midwifery were "midwife", "pregnant woman", "natural childbirth", "obstetric nursing" and "delivery outcome".

The development of research in the field of midwifery in China is slow, and cooperation between teams, institutions and regions needs to be further strengthened in the future. Strengthening the capacity building of midwifery professionals is the key direction of future research, and obstetric nursing is the main trend of future research.

Midwifery; Bibliometrics; Obstetric nursing; Visual analysis