Do midwives need to be more media savvy?

Abstract

Fear is increasingly cited as a reason for rising rates of intervention in childbirth, with women it is argued opting for operative birth in order to avoid going through labour. Explanatory factors are said to include previous negative birth experiences, but increasingly the way that childbirth is portrayed by the media is suggested to be having a significant effect on women’s perceptions and raising anxiety with regard to the birth process. Last year, with growing interest in the impact of the media on maternal perceptions, Bournemouth University held a debate on the role that the media plays in creating fear in childbirth (Hundley et al., 2014). Not surprisingly the debate sparked fairly heated discussion, but a point raised by our media colleagues made us stop and think. They argued that the responsibility for balanced reporting of childbirth lay not with the media but with the midwifery profession. Midwives they said needed to be more media savvy.