Fear of Childbirth: Why women have detached from birth as a rite of passage

Fear of giving birth, and how fear can affect your experience, is something every expectant mother needs to spend some time thinking through. The mind and body connection during birth is undisputed in medical terms, which means that how you think and feel about birth will have a physiological affect on your body. Medical understanding acknowledges that a woman's thoughts, feelings, and mindset are integral to the physiological process of birth. Fear will create tension in the body and inhibit the release of Oxytocin, the crucial birthing hormone, and nature’s pain relief, Endorphins. Check out our Fear Wisdom sheet here for a deep dive read of this topic.

The fear spectrum ranges from slight apprehension and moderate anxiety, which is fairly normal, to Tokophobia at the far end of the scale, which is an extreme fear of childbirth that can make women avoid pregnancy, or remain fearful throughout their entire pregnancy and birth. The Fear-Tension-Pain Cycle, written about and discovered by the Obstetrician Grantly-Dick-Reed, is believed to be at the root of why some women birth in pain, and others don’t. Meaning that fear can interfere with you having a natural and straightforward birth. These aren’t woo-woo statements! This is all biology.

Finding out where on this spectrum a woman identifies is needed, as fear may also encourage a mother to accept medical interventions that may not be in her or her baby’s best interest. Therefore, fear needs to be addressed and healed appropriately, either through Hypnobirthing, or with the more severe cases, through therapy and a counsellor. 

If we consider that in most modern developed societies, fear of birth embeds itself into our subconscious from childhood, as any depiction of birth in the media is usually grossly over-exaggerated and even sometimes factually incorrect for shock value and entertainment purposes. Many readers will remember the UK-produced show, ‘One Born Every Minute’. The show was so badly received by the birthing world that an outcry led to debate over whether the show should be banned, as it was blamed for fostering a terrified fear-culture around birth. Thankfully, I never watched that ‘insert expletive’ 🤪 during my own pregnancies. I intuitively stayed away, knowing it would do this mama no good!! 

Let’s take a look through the lens of how birth has been culturally framed, prepared for, and supported during different times in our history, and how we can condition our minds to re-frame birth as a positive experience.

Fear in Ancient and Traditional Societies

In many ancient and traditional communities, birth was not hidden from children, rather, it was witnessed instead. Children saw childbirth as a natural rite of passage, and an everyday occurrence that women’s bodies were designed for,  which would have been extremely empowering for young girls. Birthing rituals and customs supported the mother, eliminated fear, and fostered a realistic view of birth, so that even witnessing a complication during a birth would have been balanced out by multiple complication-free birth stories, and lived experiences. 

Birth then was seen as a normal life event, not primarily a medical emergency, which has unfortunately become the case in many modern cultures. Women were surrounded by other women, midwives and relatives, in familiar places when they gave birth. Safety and privacy created a supportive environment for the birthing mother and would have been conducive to helping the mother relax, enabling the flow of Oxytocin, the goddess of all the birthing hormones. She is the ‘love’ hormone and signals to the body when it’s time for birth to begin, and is essential for the uterus to contract strongly and effectively enough to birth little bubbas.

Although fear did still exist to some extent within these societies, it was only in the context of some first births, obstructed labour, or when signs suggested something “unnatural” (e.g. prolonged labour, malpresentation). But instead of fear becoming the de facto overarching feeling when things didn’t go to plan, the community response was to pull together and carry out specific rituals 

Archaeology and ancient texts (Egyptian papyri, Greek and Roman writings, Mesopotamian incantations etc) show that birth was highly respected and well-prepared for as maternal mortality did occur, but fear was more often framed in spiritual terms (appeasing gods, invoking protection charms) rather than as panic about the body itself.

In Greece and Rome, women used amulets to Artemis or Diana for safe birth. Fear of death or upsetting their gods was acknowledged, as much as for any other event or activity that was undertaken through daily life, and the birthing event itself was  woman-centred and ritualised.

The Shift: Medieval to Early Modern Europe

From the Middle Ages through to the 18th century, birth increasingly moved behind closed doors. For young girls, this shift created a shroud of mystery and uncertainty around birth. The new norm was that birth became learned through whispers or traumatic tales. As the quality of life dropped compared to earlier ancient civilisations, and new infections spread through the population at various times, it was increasingly common for young girls to witness the visible grief of mothers losing babies, or from women dying in childbirth following infection or a haemorrhage - emergencies which could not be controlled with medicine still being in its infancy. Naturally, without the balance of normal, positive birth stories to counteract the negative ones, birth was reframed as a dangerous, risky business. 

Interestingly, during this era, the rise and prominence of religion and the patriarchal dominance, saw the emergence of a new narrative around birth. Folklore and religious beliefs could cast childbirth as a dangerous punishment for sin, for example drawing on biblical narratives like  "Eve's curse" that portrayed God to have punished Eve for disobeying Him by decreeing that women would experience pain in childbirth - an event that was previously more effortless. 

New negative language and views of birth eroded women’s confidence and belief in their bodies, diminishing their innate feminine powers, and became the start of women no longer being active directors of their births. 

The embodiment of birth as a sacred and transformative experience, whereby women’s intuition was held in the highest regard and women’s supportive bonds became even tighter, were soon surpassed by a new-held belief that birth was a form of suffering that women had to endure, and live in fear of. 

The 19th & Early 20th Centuries: Medicalisation and new interventions 

The emergence of the Industrial Revolution brought drastic change to the birthing landscape as birth moved from a home setting into a hospital instead. Women became part of the workforce which decreased the midwife-led approach to birth at home. Men stepped into the birth space through the new field of Obstetrics, a job not permitted to women. The irony and disparity of this change are so palpable! 

Birth machinery and interventions were presented as “modern progress”. And while doctors did save many lives, there were new threats to women, such as contracting infections while in hospital. Before proper hygiene and hand washing were introduced and understood, doctors would unintentionally pass on bacteria and germs between patients. Pain relief, delivery by forceps, and twilight sleep (injection of the pain relief drugs morphine and scopolamine) reinforced the idea that birth was inherently dangerous and babies needed rescuing. Girls grew up seeing birth as a medical emergency rather than a life event, and their first impressions often came from stories of trauma, loss, or danger. 

No wonder women have become so detached from what should be a rite of passage and a transformative milestone in their lives. You can read more on this by the brilliant, Dr Rachel Reed.

As females of the species, we have had to endure many challenges, including monthly menstrual cramps and then the joys of the menopause and all the challenges that can bring! 

So I would like to think that giving birth is where we get to enjoy something truly momentous in life - think of it as our reward, or a gift bestowed upon us.

You can learn more about birth as an ecstatic and orgasmic event by checking out this post! 

How is birth viewed today in modern, developed societies?

Today, we live with a paradox as access to information is greater than ever, yet so is exposure to frightening birth narratives online. 

We have each been systematically programmed by the media to fear birth, so that on a subconscious level, we are likely to have more fear than we realise. TV programmes and movies have been shown, through in-depth research, to generally only portray birth in a terrifying way, for entertainment value. And when the process of birth has been natural, generally characters are portrayed as ‘hippy dippy’ or ‘outside of reality’. Similarly, news stories about birth are sensationalist, just as all news coverage is, to attract more eyes and profit. And even stories sharing historical accounts focus on ‘what went wrong’. But continuous negative portrayals of birth have lasting effects. 

Although positive birth education is available through antenatal classes, hypnobirthing, and social media, it often has to compete with decades of internalised fear.

For many, the fear of childbirth that began in childhood shows up as:

• Avoidance of pregnancy

• Requests for elective caesarean without a medical reason

• High anxiety during pregnancy

• Prolonged or more painful labours due to stress hormones like adrenalin inhibiting oxytocin

Breaking the Cycle

If fear begins in childhood, so can confidence. Here’s how we can take steps as a society, and within our friendship groups and families, to re-frame birth from scary and painful, to empowering and transformational.

• Share positive, truthful stories with children and teens — ones that acknowledge birth’s power without casting it as purely dangerous.

• Teach body literacy early, so birth is understood as a physiological process, not a mysterious medical event. Once you learn the facts and understand the alchemy of what giving birth involves, you can’t help but be floored by it all and actually just relax into it. It then comes to be viewed as the most natural thing that we are born to do!

• Let young people witness or hear about varied birth experiences, not just extremes.

• Go back to home births being the norm in low-risk pregnancies.

• Model trust in the body’s abilities, even when birth takes unexpected turns. Educate yourselves on how you can help to bring birth back on track if the baby has other ideas (e.g.a deflexed chin lifted, or their head inclined to one side, in a more tricky position life back to back ‘Occiput Posterior’. All of these can put a break on labour’s flow. Learn about the power of inversions to help move baby, the benefits of bouncing a birthing ball, stair walking, ‘shaking the apples’ and more (I’ll do a seperate blog post on this soon!).

• Champion mothers’ intuition and instinct to know how to position herself and move during birth for the easiest birthing process, or to recognise when something feels wrong and she needs help. Our intuition is our most valuable ally. 

A Better Birthing Future

Fear of childbirth is rarely born in the delivery room. It’s sown in the stories we hear, the images we see, and the silences we grow up in. By consciously choosing what we consume around birth, and the messages we pass to the next generation, we can raise daughters — and sons — who see birth not as something to dread, but as a natural, powerful and magical part of life.

Ask yourself — what stories about birth did I hear as a child? Which stories shaped the way I feel today? And which ones do I want to pass on?