Mumsnet and Facebook putting women off natural birth with 'tsunami of horror stories'

Women sharing ‘horror stories’ online may be putting people off having children

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In today’s social media age, oversharing has become the norm, but where does this leave us when it comes to childbirth?

Once an experience shared only between parents and midwives, giving birth has become a trending topic online, as women divulge their stories across a range of platforms with a no holds barred approach to detail.

While anecdotes of the labour process may provide feelings of comfort and camaraderie among new and expecting mothers, one midwifery lecturer has claimed that they may be traumatising pregnant women and putting some people off childbirth altogether.

Speaking at the British Science Festival on Wednesday, Catriona Jones, senior research fellow at the University of Hull, explained that “horror stories” about birth shared online are contributing the rise of tocophobia: a phobia of childbirth.

The advent of parenting forums such as Mumsnet and Netmums has provided mothers with a dedicated platform on which they can share their experiences, however graphic they may be, which Jones argues exacerbate fears of labour.

“If you go into Mumsnet forums, women are telling stories about childbirth — ‘it’s terrible, it’s a bloodbath’. I think that can be difficult to deal with,” she said, adding that these sites contain a "tsunami" of negative birthing stories."

Speaking to The Independent, Jones adds that negative anecdotes such as these are rife across social media.

“They generate a level of anxiety among women, particularly if they’re reading stories like this when they’re already pregnant,” she says.

Roughly 14 per cent of pregnant women suffer from tocophobia, a study from last year claims, and the figure has been steadily rising since 2000.

Jones was asked to research the phenomenon after the NHS noticed a surge in healthy pregnant women asking for caesareans due to fears of giving birth vaginally.

“They came to us and said that women were being referred to them late on in pregnancy and they were having to work with them to unpick their fear of childbirth,” she said at the festival.

However, according to Justine Roberts, Mumsnet founder and CEO, anecdotes regarding labour can be hugely helpful to expecting mothers, even if they recount unpleasant experiences.

"Mumsnet users are impatient with the idea that adult women aren't entitled to discover the truth about the full spectrum of birth experiences, from the blissful to the terrifying,” she says.

“Understandably, a great deal of NHS messaging about labour focuses on the positive, but the downside of this is that mothers who have traumatic experiences feel, in retrospect, that they were given a deeply partial account: one of the most common complaints we see on this topic is 'Why on earth didn't anyone tell me the truth about how bad it could be?'''

Roberts' comments are supported by Netmums editor-in-chief, Annie O'Leary, who tells The Independent she is "disappointed" at claims that sites such as theirs are cultivating a fear of childbirth.

“Most mums see it as a positive that we live in an age where we can have discussions about birth that are true, accurate and real without it being shrouded in secrecy," she says.

"Every birth is different and for every ‘horror story’, as Catriona Jones chose to put it, there are stories where women have nothing but good things to say of their experience."

A spokesperson for The British Pregnancy Advisory Service tells The Independent that parenting forums should not be blamed for fostering a culture of fear around childbirth, touting the benefits of them from a public health perspective:

"Forums like Mumsnet provide vital spaces for women to share their experiences, both good and bad, where there is much for healthcare professionals and policy makers to learn about how care can let some women down and where improvements are sorely needed.

"It is really problematic to see women’s experiences of childbirth dismissed in this way and minimised."