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?

I think there is an awful lot of generalisation going on in this thread!

I don’t think every single woman in history, was ‘terrified’ of being pregnant and giving birth, and knew nothing of contraception. Nor were they all constantly raped by brutish drunken husbands who treated them like slaves.

Lots of women then, (and those not living in western societies now) enjoyed sex, had loving relationships and wanted children. It is possible to limit the number of children you have even if you don’t have access to modern contraception and are not compelled for religious reasons.

i found this book fascinating in regard to womens attitudes and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in years gone by. I read it when i was pregnant with my first and 28 years later still pick it up.

“The Midwifes Tale - an oral history from handywoman to professional midwife”

Marital rape was legal until the 1990s, for much of history refusing to have sex with your husband was grounds for him to divorce you.

Divorce was a social stigma that could lead you being cast out and disowned. You would probably lose access to your children and all property and money.

If you were unmarried it was very difficult to support yourself and you would often be dependent upon your father or brother. Ways for women to make a living were limited and most women had little access to education.

Preventing pregnancy was virtually impossible unless your husband was sympathetic and ending a pregnancy was dangerous and illegal.

In the historical context though life expectancy under 40 in the 1800s. It wasn't just child birth that was high risk of death almost everything was. What we would consider as dying young was the norm then. Even in the 50s the average was only 66, retirement was for the lucky few.

I think so but life was generally rough back then. You could die from drinking infected water or the like.

My Nanna who would be a 100 this year if she were alive, told me when she was a girl there was no sex education in any way - mums got pregnant had babies some died some didn’t.
When she met her husband she didn’t even have a bra she used to put elastic around the hem of a shortened vest to give her some siupport and she borrowed her sisters bra to go on dates.
she didn’t know what sex was or how to do it and her husband was very shy too - when she did fall pregnant she didn’t know how long it would be for or anything and finally when she was in labour she thought her belly button opened and the baby came out.
(she was from a very small village in suffolk)

I think like now, some were and some weren't.

Many had seen their Mothers, aunts and siblings have multiple healthy pregnancies and normal deliveries whereas some will have known tragedy happen.

Unlike now, with free healthcare and access to probably too much information and too many horror stories, women of the past were going on what they knew from the people closest to them.

Sadly lots of the world is still like this for women.

Social conditioning, if you don't know any better you tend to go along with it plus for many families it was the cost of another child which was an issue too. However with limited education, a society where men ruled and the normal desire ti have children which many women have, they just went with the flow. Remember marriage meant getting out of their childhood home perhaps being sold a dream of a better future! Women had very little earning potential too

Yes they were.

I've quoted it before on MN but can't remember the details off the top of my head but there was a doctor (think he was French) who wrote about it over a hundred years ago stating that it drove some women into a state of unconsolable terror.

His description matches that of modern day tokophobia descriptions.

And if we are honest, it was actually a fair and rational response given the rates of mortality and birth injuries.

It would be more surprising if women didn't feel this.

Even with modern health care there's still very legitimate reasons to become highly distressed by and/or avoidant of pregnancy. It's still not taken seriously by many but it is a recognised condition.

There's a very good podcast on BBC sounds by the amazing Lucy Worsley called Ladykillers.

It is a feminist look at women who kill, but many of the episodes examine things like why a woman might murder her husband or why a woman might have multiple convictions for providing abortions, or what happens to slaves who get pregnant or the history of baby farms. Absolutely fascinating albeit a bit grim at times.

By the way, alas there are parts of the world where this is still the case. I support a couple of charities that provide equipment and train birth attendants is very poor parts of the world - if these women can get to a hospital there is medical care available admittedly but in rainy season especially it can be impossible to make it so women die due to simple complications like a breech birth, if if they don't die they can be left with lifelong injuries which would be simply fixed here but unless there are charities working in that country they can not afford treatment and are ostracised

I have been researching my family history recently and have knowledge of family life from 1893 onwards from my late grandparents. There was one maternal death in around 1880 where my great grandmothers younger sister died very shortly after giving birth to a daughter. Her husband was a bricklayer and couldn’t manage on his own so the baby went to live with my great grandmother and her husband being brought up as their daughter and getting an equal inheritance to their own child. My grandfather was baptised at home on the day of his birth in 1893 and he had no siblings, so I have always wondered if GGM was either afraid of having more children or badly damaged by the birth. Apart from that there were large families of 6 or 8 with only one possibly maternal death back to around 1750 ish. My mother and grandmothers told me that coming from farming families and having mothers, aunts and sisters who had had babies at home meant that they expected childbirth to be difficult but had a lot of experienced support.

I find it really interesting to look back at my family history. What's clear is that the parts of my family who were more middle class had fewer children. It's clearly deliberate and planned. The poorer the family were, the more children they seemed to have (with varying levels of survival).

As for mortality rates and life expectancy, a few of the comments on this thread seem to give the impression that most people died young. That's really not a true as it seems. The number dying in child birth and infancy very much distort the figures.

Women tended to die in child birth with their first or second child. Birth order seems to be a big factor too - first born didn't seem as likely to survive and the last few children born when mothers had hit 40 didn't seem to have as good chance. If you made it past 5 you had a decent chance though.

Both DH and I have family histories where living into your 80s is typical. And this is true of lines descended from our common ancestors - it's so widespread I find it difficult to describe it as just pure luck or unusual.

The issue is that if you got sick you were much more at risk of death, so there's incentive to stay healthy and look after your health. Which is interesting because we have a creeping mentality now that this isn't important and that medicine can always fix us or there is a drug for everything.

Well I was pretty scared tbh.
Through history things changed hugely.

In the earlier 20th century DH's grandma had 13 children, only one born in hospital, and one died at birth (one twin).

But hospital for childbirth before people washed their hands and understood cross contamination was horrific and had huge mortality rates. There's stories of doctors and surgeons going from dissecting a corpse to the hospital ward without washing their hands or changing their clothes. It doesn't bear thinking about. And would be absolutely terrifying.

Alternatively, your female relations would gather around as support. There might be a midwife or experienced woman who could help. But the life of the mother would be prioritised if there were difficulties.

There was a very interesting article on BBC news the other day, I'll see if I can find it and post later.

Researchers going back through hundreds of years of official and church BMD records shows that many women were already pregnant at the time of marriage. It suggested that at this was because couples would sleep together once engaged, and wed only when pregnant as a way of making sure the couple were fertile.
And that average age at marriage was late 20s, both as a way to save up money to set up a household and the added benefit of less pregnancies. Interestingly the lowest average age for marriage was in the post war baby boom years, and that was 24 I think.

There were options for contraception, but condoms were more to prevent STIs for men using prostitutes. There's an interesting book written by Dan Cruikshank about the secret history of Georgian London covering which covers prostitution very well.

There were herbs that could "bring on a period". Again it would probably be a wise woman you'd go to for advice on that rather than a doctor.

On women and independence, in the Medieval period you would be at your most financially independent if you reached widowhood assuming you weren't aristocratic, very wealthy or very poor and could continue . You then would no longer be under the care of your husband, nor your father.

And there was a patron saint of childbirth. There's records of good luck charms and ore birth preparations.

Sorry it's a bit of a brain dump as I'm doing several things at once! Interesting thread though.

The mortality rate shoots up around 1840 at the start of the industrial revolution.

It's to do with hygiene in towns and cities. This mortality is connected to issues with sanitation and access to clean water.

Also prior to the industrial revolution the population level was stable because farming couldn't grow enough food to support a bigger population. The industrial revolution was only possible because it coincided with advances in farming which allowed for more than subsistence farming which enabled towns and cities to grow and support more people.

If you come from a farming community, you'd be less affected by a lot of these changes which affected mortality during the last two centuries.

My mother told me that she cried in the doctor’s surgery when he confirmed she was pregnant (first time) in 1971. He told her off, and lectured her about how she should be celebrating, and to think of all the women who can’t have babies. She could only see downsides.

I don’t know how the pregnancy took her by surprise. But aside from this apparent lack of knowledge, she was a clever woman who had done very well in her O Levels but wasn’t allowed to stay on to do A Levels. She remained bitter about this her whole life. She enjoyed the jobs she then got, but once married was expected by my Dad to quit the career in order to have a dinner on the table for him and the house kept. She resisted for a while, but pregnancy was the nail in the coffin.

She brought me up to value education and a career, and told me I shouldn’t bother with marriage and children.

It perhaps sadly her husband wouldn't take no for an answer

@Bigcoatlady rates seem to be higher than 1/1000. There is a comprehensive article here
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/

You could be right although I think her husband was similarly upset by the pregnancy. Apparently they were so poor they were actually relieved when one of the children died in infancy. It doesn't bear thinking about

Nunnerys were popular. That's changed. But I don't think that purely related to do with declining interest in religion.

It was a way to avoid being married and having children. It was a way for women to control their own bodies and remain respected in society.

My grandfather was widowed with four children in the 1920s so he quickly married again and had many more children by his new wife. She joked to my Mum that whenever he threw his trousers over the end of the bed she got pregnant again! They were devout Catholics.

Even in the 1960s my parents regarded contraception as a sin, and my mother's 6th pregnancy was dangerous and ended tragically. She suffered pre eclampsia and was in hospital for months every time, so when I was little she would be absent for long periods. Family rallied round although I remember being sent round to the neighbour every morning so she could do my plaits! Poor Dad baffled by them.

Mum was so ill with baby no 6 that doctors had suggested a termination early on, but the parish priest talked her out of it. Her and my Dad were so traumatised when the baby died - and Mum nearly died - that they never went to church again.

Missed a bit on medieval financial independence- if a widow had a business she could continue, and was granted the right to continue to trade on her own, maybe to manage it for any children to inherit, that would be peak independence and give her the most options. Remarriage would at least be a choice.

Aristocrats, and heiresses would become wards for another male (king or another) to dispose of in marriage, the the poor may feel the need to marry again for financial stability. Most options were not great though.

There is a character in Tolstoy's War and Peace who spends her pregnancy in a state of terrible anxiety about the prospect of giving birth.

She does then die in childbirth.

Def read The Forsyte Saga if you want to learn a bit more from a historical perspective. It's fictional but the female protagonist is horrifically abused by her husband in every way and the story is how she breaks free of that and finds happiness.