Historically were women petrified of being pregnant due to childbirth?

[Buttercupsandpoppys]

As the title says. Mortality rates weren’t great with so many women dying during labour.

I know there was so much pressure to have children as a women. In period dramas and books/films you see women desperate to ‘provide sons’. But if they knew death was so likely, wouldn’t they be petrified at the very thought of pregnancy?

im suprised history isn’t full of women just point blank refusing sex/marriage and all having to be publicly dragged kicking and screaming knowing pregnancy was practically a flipping of the coin between life and death.

I honestly think I’d have tried any and every trick in the book to avoid it. Even making myself as unattractive as possible so no kind would wish to marry me!

Anyone have any knowledge of this?

Yes they were.

Look at the all the abortions and the women locked up for helping other women.

As for refusing sex. Oh to be so naive is all I will add.

I wonder wether the high mortality rate in childbirth was why they didn't bother to educate women.

Men are physically bigger and stronger than women. That is why they've had so much power.

But yes, in some classical literature and the diaries of literate women you do see references to fear/ preparations for possible death as time of birth approaches.

Being a nun was a lot more popular then.

I would also point out that rape in marriage wasn't a crime in England until 1992.

My granny told my mom that people didn’t celebrate their pregnancy and it was seen as bad luck because you could be carrying your death sentence, she was Irish and had 11 children!

I think they were probably more afraid of having another child to bring up, it wasn't that common to die in childbirth. The risk was about 1 in 1000 even in 1751. Of course much higher than today, but it wasn't 50/50. And you wouldn't want nobody to marry you because in the past it was extremely difficult for a woman to support herself on her own. So not being married would damn you to a life of poverty and social ostracism.

I think the data shows maternal mortality in ft labour without intervention is around 1/100 births. Of course if a woman had ten pregnancies leading to birth her odds of dying due to complications increased to 1/10 (crudely - genetic variation means some women would be at more risk than others).

Maternal mortality becomes frighteningly high in inpatient settings before infection control was understood - women in Vienna in the 1860s were terrified of being removed to hospital if they had complications during labour because they knew pretty much all women who went into hospital caught a fever and died. Understanding that infection was attributable to surgeons not washing their hands after performing autopsies was Semmelweiss big breakthrough - and also lead to him being ostracized by the medical establishment.

But outside hospital women fared much better. It's only in the late nineteenth century that medical intervention starts to significantly reduce the maternal.mortality rate and since the 1950s it's become thankfully incredibly rare.

Babies then and now are more vulnerable. Parents commonly lost children before the age of 10 to infection. Even today the first year of a child's life is by far the most dangerous although thankfully the absolute number of deaths is lower. But I suspect people feared losing children as much if not more as their own mortality.

It is clear women were scared of the pain of labour - and before anesthesia started to be used in the 19th century all kinds of other interventions including just having regular slugs of gin were used to alleviate that. But there's a lot of moving accounts of how much women were apprehensive of childbirth and how they would cope.

My gran was one of 10, her mum died in her forties. When we looked at the birthdays, it was clear that she was either pregnant or recovering with 2x a bigger gap where we assume she had miscarriages/stillbirth.

They may have been terrified but reality means unless you popped out the heir and spare and was able to live independently from your husband you were pregnant a lot.

As a woman wasn't an independent being without her father or a husband, marriage was for 98% the only way, the others were spinsters who had an inheritance or kept house for a bachelor brother.

But wasn't that social ostracism and poverty a way if coercing women into marrying and childbirth

The 1 in 1000 figure is from here, I wonder if the 1% comes from hospital births then?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maternal-mortality?region=Europe

I think the thing was people died for all sorts of reasons, not just childbirth. So life itself was sacred and it could go whenever. Death was a part of life.

Jennifer Worth’s memoirs, which Call the Midwife was originally based on, offer interesting insight into this.

Women must have been terrified. I wonder if maybe in the past the statistically greater religiosity in the population was emotionally necessary for some people to help them try to live with the very brutal realities and injustices of life.

I don't think it's that clear cut, there's a natural desire to have children and despite the dangers I'm sure many women wanted to.

Yes, I think they probably were.

Being a nun was a common life choice.

Likewise being a "spinster" and I think some of them probably did make themselves unattractive so as to fly under of the radar of men and just be left alone.

And really, who can blame them?

I was terrified I might die while I was in labour. It’s the closest I ever felt to death (very difficult births, emergency sections) and i Guess, in times gone by, I would have died. It’s a very very sobering thought.

From the table above, it's still a frightening prospect in many parts of the world. Couple that with no access to, or cultural rejection of, contraception, plus child marriage/ forced marriage, and you can imagine how delighted women and girls aren't to be pregnant yet again even in 2024.
Womens rights in the wider world still have a long way to go.

Death in child birth was not that common before the industrial revolution. You didn't inherit an inability to give birth naturally then, the way you can now!

It put Elizabeth I right off!

They were, who wouldn’t be when they had to sew a shroud for themselves along with the layette?

They didn’t have any choice, and children were wanted and needed so they just got on with it.

Yes I wondered about this for my friend who lives in Afghanistan. She confirmed she is terrified.

Yes, a lot of women made their will before childbirth.

@Buttercupsandpoppys lots of good points made here about the history.

But also don’t forget a woman was legally the property of her nearest male relative. She didn’t have a legal identity of her own.

So it was actually quite difficult also to become a nun or a spinster. It would often involve running away. If you were lucky and you didn’t have any relatives bothering you then it was easier of course.

Not just historically.
I am 57 and I was certainly terrified of childbirth which is part of the reason I never had children and it made me VERY careful with my contraception.
I also did a post reg course and placement in a continence clinic (I am a nurse) and seeing the damage done to many women totally reinforced my fears.
Had there been the option of elective c sections in my child bearing years maybe I might have considered it.

Youve got it all backwards. You are going by todays treatment of women which isn’t perfect of course but is 1000x better than then.
Women didn’t have a choice to marry. Didn’t have a choice to become pregnant or give birth. Didn’t have any choices at all in many cases. Women’s fear was completely irrelevant to men.