The role of midwives has been extended to assisting with consultation in contraception and sexuality by the 1972 legislation setting personnel requirements for French family planning centers. This law expands their limits beyond prenatal care and childbirth, 80% of which is attended by midwives in Paris. New professional courses on family psychology, sexuality, and contraception have been instituted in Lyons. This address contains an outline of the courses and quotes the text of the new health code applying to midwives. Experienced midwives will be competent to counsel couples with problems in the physical or psychosocial systems resulting in frigidity, vaginismus, premature ejaculation, or impotence. They can discuss types of pills and contraindications, measure for diaphragms, caps for nulliparas, or IUDs for those who cannot take the pill. The recent history of the French midwives association is summarized.