Social media ‘horror stories’ are fuelling a phobia of childbirth
ONLINE ‘horror stories’ are contributing to a rise in the number of women with a pathological terror of childbirth, according to a leading midwife.
The condition, known as tocophobia, affects around 14 per cent of women and can be serious enough to prompt requests for caesareans and abortions.
The number of women with a severe fear of giving birth has been rising globally since 2000, research suggests.
Catriona Jones, a lecturer in midwifery at the University of Hull who has studied tocophobia, believes social media is partly to blame for the phenomenon.
She told the British Science Festival at the university: ‘You just have to Google “childbirth” and you’re met with a tsunami of horror stories. If you go on to any of the Mumsnet forums there are women telling their stories of childbirth – oh, it was terrible, it was a bloodbath, this and that happened.
‘That can be quite frightening. I wouldn’t say social media is leading women to be afraid of childbirth, but it plays a part.’
Tocophobia falls on a wide spectrum and only the most severe cases are diagnosed as a medical condition, Miss Jones added.
Taking into account those who do not meet the clinical threshold for diagnosis, the proportion of women who experience tocophobia could be as high as 30 per cent, she said.
The actress Dame Helen Mirren displayed evidence of a fear of childbirth brought on by seeing something offputting – so-called primary tocophobia, according to Miss Jones.
She said: ‘Helen Mirren said she was shown a sex education video at school that horrified her so much she decided she was never going to have children.’ Treatments include one-to-one educational sessions with midwives and being exposed to labour rooms or operating theatres ‘in a non-threatening way’.
Professor of midwifery Julie Jomeen said: ‘Tocophobia is a modern phenomenon. Two hundred years ago people accepted they might die from childbirth. Today we expect childbirth to be safe.’
Only eight mothers out of every 100,000 died during childbirth in 2015, the latest year for which figures are available.