"Why Do Women fear Birth?"

Over the last decade, there has been a rise in both medicated and instrumental deliveries. In some communities, the induction (Pitocin and Cytotec) rate is near 85%; the epidural rate is near 90%; cesarean section rate is above 25% and instrumental (forceps and vacuum extraction) is near 50%. What makes women of this millennium different from those of women at the beginning of the natural childbirth movement in the 1960's ~ in terms of trusting their bodies or seeking out managed births? Will women rediscover their true instincts for birth and what role can childbirth educators and doulas play?
We, as a society, have encountered a devaluation of life itself. Slowly over many years, this devaluation has seeped into the area of reproduction and taints some views of pregnancy, labor, and birth. This devaluation has contributed to the intensity of the fears women feel toward birth. With the help of the book, Birth As An American Rite of Passage by Robbie Davis-Floyd, these fears can be summarized in three categories.
Fear of the Unknown
We've heard of a proven pelvis. What about a proven spirit? Each pregnancy is different and each labor is different. Expectant women are no longer around family (mothers, sisters, aunts) to see the normal birth process. They tend to view birth as a mechanical process rather than a deeply spiritual and life altering event. Robbie Davis-Floyd, noted anthropologist, says, "birth rituals should affirm and reaffirm the unity and integrity of the family and the individuals that comprise it, instead of sending patriarchal messages about the primacy of science, technology, and institutions. Each of these have their place, but that place is to be of service to - rather than exploit - nature, individuals, families, and most especially birthing women."
Fear of the Known
Only 4% of all women who will ever birth feel no pain. In this modern age, women are too busy to investigate childbirth classes or read. Davis-Floyd makes the point, "hospital procedures are not specifically designed to serve as vehicles of concern and reassurance to birthing women, and often they do not. Women who fully believe in the technocratic model, expecting that 'the doctor will take care of everything' often experience feelings of shock, upset, and abandonment if he doesn't. Since these women do not take childbirth preparation classes, they usually have no cognitive matrix in terms of which they can interpret their experiences, no breathing rituals, no 'labor support person,' to mediate for them between cognition and chaos." Their frames of reference do nothing to assist them in coping with this fear.


Fear of Change
Many people are afraid of change, especially change in their routine or comfort levels. Birth typically does not come on a schedule. It is unpredictable. There is no one prescribed way that labor can begin, progress or end. Hospitals have prescribed to a comfortable technocratic belief system and practices that are standard for most laboring women. Davis-Floyd states, "I argue that these procedures serve as rituals and are so widely used in hospital birth because they successfully fulfill several important needs: (1) the individual psychological needs of the hospital personnel officially responsible for birth for constant confirmation of the rightness of the technocratic model, and for reassuring ways to cope with birth's constant threat to upset the model; (2) the individual needs of birthing women for psychological reassurance in the face of these same unknowns, for official recognition by society of their personal transformation, and for official confirmation of the rightness and validity of their belief systems; and (3) the need of the wider culture to ensure the effective socialization of its citizens and thus its own perpetuation."
So why change if everyone is comfortable? Why encourage women to birth naturally, trust their instincts when labor can be actively managed? Perhaps the closing paragraph of Birth As An American Rite of Passage will cause you to think, as it does me whenever I read it: If it is true, as psychotherapist Gayle Peterson says, that 'as a woman lives, so shall she give birth,' then perhaps it is also true that as individuals within a society shape birth, so shall they shape social life. It is both my belief and my hope that in the end - or the beginning - the salvation of the society which seeks to deny women their power as birth-givers will arise from the women who, nevertheless, give that society birth."



Reference: Birth source.com