Views on childbirth affected by the media

The representation of childbirth in the mass media affects how women view childbirth, a study published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth has found.

Midwives need to be more involved with TV programme makers to improve the representation of midwifery and maternity in the media, the paper said.

The study by researchers at Bournemouth University was a scoping review relating to the representation of childbirth in the mass media, particularly on television.

The researchers found three key themes in the academic literature. These were the medicalisation of childbirth, women using media to learn about childbirth, and, thirdly, birth as a missing everyday life event.

Much of the academic literature, most of which was from the US or UK, discussed the influence of television, which often portrays childbirth as risky, dramatic and painful.

In reality, most of pregnancy and childbirth is slow, relatively uneventful with a lot of waiting for labour to progress. This makes normal childbirth boring for visual media, such as television.

According to the results, it would appear that the media influenced how women engage with childbirth.

The dramatic television portrayal of birth may perpetuate the medicalisation of childbirth. Portrayals of normal birth are often missing in the popular media.

They said that this advice should also be extended to pressure groups working to improve maternity care.

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