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?

Men aren't slaves to what women want. If they were, they'd hoover. Just because the woman is broody and willing to risk death and untreatable (at that time) birth injuries, doesn't mean that the man has to indulge her.

Hugely recommend Tina Cassidy's grisly but fascinating book "Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born" to anyone interested (apart from those yet to deliver!). It's probably out of print now; I read it when my kids were small - but it really stuck with me. You can pick up a secondhand copy on Amazon or looks like you can still get it on Kindle.

If I was male and knew that each birth had a one in 100 chance of killing my wife, I wouldn't fuck her. Hell, I wouldn't fuck a stranger and subject her to those odds.

First of all, people didn't know the odds with any degree of accuracy: they just knew that death in childbirth happened.

Secondly, your first birth was your most dangerous. If you survived that, your odds in future were much better.

Third, life was in general more dangerous all round, so there was a greater acceptance of risk. There were many, many opportunities to do yourself a damage: naked flames, sharp implements in daily use, large animals which could be unpredictable, steep stairs with no railings. A compound fracture had high odds of killing you. Accidents were common as risk wasn't seen in the same way, and these accidents were often deadly in an era of limited medical knowledge: if little Betsy toddled out in front of a horse pulling a laden waggon and got trampled, she was highly likely to die. But little Betsy wasn't watched with obsessive care because there wasn't the time: she was probably supposed to be under the eye of her 12-yr-old sister who was also supposed to be feeding the chickens and milking the goat, while the father was out ploughing and the mother was doing the washing and cooking the meals (and tending the vegetable garden and making straw hats to earn some extra cash...)

Fourth, children were your insurance policy. If you made it to old age and could no longer work, unless you had substantial savings, you were reliant upon your offspring. And in many times and places, you were reliant on those same offspring to hep to run the farm, and it helped to have a balance of boys and girls due to the division of labour.

Maybe read some historical diaries, letters, novels, conduct books from the past. You'll only understand the past if you make a bit of effort to get into the mindset.

A fascinating thread. Makes me glad to be alive today. Thank goodness childbirth is much less risky. For those who can't believe the risks people took with childbirth in the past, think of some of the things we do now which we know are probably pretty risky - eating huge amounts of processed food, high exposure to plastics, use of phones from a young age, but we still do them anyway.

In current year, you don't have a choice about plastic exposure as it's in the food chain.

I'm pretty sure that using mobile phones at ten doesn't carry a one in 100 risk of death, risk of obstetric fistula, preeclampsia, haemorrhage, infection...

Bit how do we extrapolate whether women wanted children because they wanted children or because they didn't want to be treated like defective failures who had disappointed their husbands and families? There was pity or scorn directed at these women. Anne Boleyn is the most extreme example of how men regarded wives who had failed to deliver the goods.

I understand perfectly. Women knew that marriage and kids could kill them.

It's no coincidence that before early feminists even demanded the vote, they demanded divorce rights (e.g. Caroline Sheridan, whose campaigning led to the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857) and employment rights (e.g. Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, founded 1859) so that they could end a bad marriage and be financially independent.

@Buttercupsandpoppys women had zero rights, no money, no property, not much education, extremely poor paying employment. Their parents could not afford to support them. Then they had even less rights when they married. Certainly would not have had an option to refuse sex.

Thats not how they saw it. Read the texts. Just because women recognised they needed more rights, opportunities & protections doesnt mean they didn't desire love, marriage, children & families. You clearly haven't read any texts from the period or serious social histories.

It's not like all women had the same risk.

Most of the childbirth deaths would have been women with pre existing conditions.

There's a reason why a high hip:waist ratio is seen as attractive- it signifies an ability to safely give birth.

Before hormonal contraception women had higher sex drives. They were broody & horny and the pros of having DCs outweighed the cons.

I didn't need any modern medicine in my pregnancies/births. Lots of women wouldn't if modern problems aren't introduced.

Also apart from upper class/royalty the woman was worth more than the baby so the woman's life was prioritised. There were no inductions or c sections to save the baby. Premature babies died. Disabled babies were left to die.

Lots of women wouldn't if modern problems aren't introduced.

What are these "modern problems"? Because I had the cord around my neck and my mum had preeclampsia and I'd love to know what victim-blaming nonsense you're coming up with here to blame her for the fact that she and I nearly died.

Before hormonal contraception women had higher sex drives. They were broody & horny

They'd be far more likely to alleviate their arousal by flicking the bean than through intercourse. Most women don't orgasm through penetration.

Probably that horror much hissed at by my NCT. Teacher, the ‘cascade of intervention’.

Those interventions saved my life, thanks.

Before hormonal contraception women had higher sex drives. They were broody & horny and the pros of having DCs outweighed the cons

To be fair, having small babies/looking after small babies tends to bring your sex drive down regardless of contraception. My guess would be, just like today, most women enjoyed having sex. Also, just like today, most women wanted children. I don't think its a coincidence that everywhere women have been educated and/or had access to contraception the number of children they have has reduced (but usually not to 0). So I think (all other factors aside) women as a group want babies but not loads of babies, and want them to survive to adulthood. I doubt women of old times were that different - they had fewer options but that doesn't mean they didn't want (some) children. Even if childbirth without pain relief was terrible.

Well, mine and DS’s too, hence the sarcasm. All hail modern obstetric medicine.

One of my aunts (born in 1915) told me many women used Slippery Elm to induce a spontaneous abortion. Apparently, they used to insert it into their vagina. The other one, of course, is drinking a bottle of gin whilst laying in a very hot bath.

Yes.

Consequences of "natural birth", Ethiopia, right now. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TPTA4g5rGrs

Slippery elm, pennyroyal, tansy...

Victorian magazines contained adverts for pills that would "remove blockages".

https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/Centres/Global-Lives/News-and-events/News/Abortion-in-Nineteenth-Century-Britain

Yes, exactly. Its worth reading the marriage service which puts children top of the list & everyone would have known.

'First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.'

Obviously not every marriage was one of 'mutual society' but lots were. Until the Victorian period most women didn't have as many kids as you might think - about 4 was around average.

I had a high waist to hip ration. I had no pre existing conditions.

l would have died without modern medicine.

Nobody is arguing that modern obstetrics doesn't save lives. There is also evidence that it can cause problems: when I was having my DC, continuous monitoring was fairly common, and it limited maternal mobility. That could cause labour to stall and result in c-sections that might well not have happened if the mother had been walking around. But, on balance, modern medicine - well trained midwives and antibiotics, mostly - has contributed to the massive drop in maternal mortality.

Other points:
As @SharonEllis says, for most of history, most women didn't produce a dozen babies. You could only do that if you were married young and your infants were wet-nursed, and this was the preserve of the upper classes. For almost everyone else, you married in your early to mid 20s and you breastfed. How many babies you had depended on your fertility (including how much sex you had), your age at marriage, your nutrition and how much your husband was around (a man might work away for periods of time because he'd picked labouring work in town but left his wife and children in the village; he might be a thatcher, an itinerant hawker, a coachman or a drover). Your childbearing might also be interrupted by a period of widowhood. 5 or 6 live births was fairly average, though if you were well-nourished and married at 22, you might have 8 or 9.

Another factor when considering how women felt about all this was that life in general was more dangerous. I have no idea what proportion of men died in agricultural or industrial accidents before 1900, but I suspect it was unacceptable in modern terms. Farm workers were killed by horses and cattle, miners died in collapses or explosions, sailors fell off rigging or were lost at sea. In fact, anybody working at height was at high risk of falls with no safety equipment and dodgy scaffolding. This is before you consider warfare, when even men who came home could die from the lingering effects of diseases or parasites picked up abroad.

Life was just more dangerous, so the perception of acceptable risk was different.

We're talking averages.
I have a low waist/hip ratio. I had straightforward deliveries.

The average doesn't predict your individual risk.

@EdithStourton your point about risk is so important. And, People in, say, 1720, didn't have the data we have, they didn't have written records from 200 years before to track how their life trajectories might be changing. They lived far more in the moment and to some extent accepted what they saw as god's plan for them.

I read it was common for women (who were literate) to write a letter to their existing children when they were pregnant in case they didn’t make it. It wasn’t just actual childbirth that was the risk but post partum infection before antibiotics existed.
must have been terrifying - I’d be dead 24 years ago if it hadn’t been for an emergency c section.

In some parts of the third world women still die or are horribly injured in childbirth.
i guess being a spinster in times gone by wasn’t a bad thing, but in the past we lived with more expectation of from illnesses so we had a different perspective on life and death - and we accepted that some of our children would die from illnesses that are curable and preventable now - and we have better sanitation.