The Ordinary Doula Podcast
Welcome to The Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning. We help folks prepare for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
The Ordinary Doula Podcast
E88: Lights, Camera...Panic! How Media Shapes Our View of Childbirth
Media portrayals of childbirth shape our cultural beliefs and personal expectations, often presenting inaccurate, dramatic versions that instill fear rather than confidence. Our perceptions about birth are influenced by family, education, and especially the entertainment industry which frequently misrepresents what labor and delivery truly entail.
• Common birth myths in media include the dramatic water-breaking scene, screaming women who've lost control, useless panicked partners, and unrealistically fast labors
• Movies and TV shows compress birth into minutes when real labor typically takes hours or days
• Media often portrays birthing people as passive participants rather than powerful, central figures in their own experience
• Childbirth scenes in media typically feature only white women in hospital settings, missing the diversity of real birth experiences
• Social media offers more authentic birth content but can still present misleading or aesthetically-edited versions
• Mainstream portrayals in recent shows and films like "Pieces of a Woman" and "Grey's Anatomy" continue to emphasize drama and tragedy
• Being intentional about the birth media you consume can help you develop more realistic expectations
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Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker
Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice Helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
Speaker 2:Hello, this is Angie and this is the Ordinary Doula Podcast. On this podcast, we like to take practical information, share it with awesome people like yourself. I've been a doula for over 20 years. I supported thousands of people in childbirth, even more in prenatal preparation, and also support people in postpartum and lactation so kind of a whole package and love what I do, absolutely love being able to help individuals and families at this time in their life.
Speaker 2:So today I want to talk a little bit about the portrayal of birth in media and how that impacts how we feel about birth and kind of our general sense or culture surrounding birth. We've talked about this on other episodes, but I want to dive specifically into media this time. So, if you, I want you to think first of all what it is you think about birth like, just right off the bat, childbirth. What sentiments come to mind, what images come to mind, kind of what's the feeling that you have in your mind, body and heart when you think about childbirth and then think about where it came from. Childbirth is not part of I mean, we were all born, of course, so it is part of our lives that way, but it's not part of our day to day life in our culture. Unless you have a job where it is right If you're a labor delivery nurse or you're a midwife or a doctor that deals with that on a day-to-day basis, it becomes very commonplace and ordinary for you. But for most people childbirth is like way out there, right. They're not seeing it, addressing it, hearing it, feeling it every day. And then maybe they're in a situation where they are pregnant or have a pregnant friend or partner and they're like, oh wow, here's this thing called pregnancy and childbirth and it has to be addressed, right, people? You know, like a pregnancy lasts for a while, it's an experience, it's a long experience, and then of course the labor and birth is a big experience. So it's kind of an acute experience in our life. For most folks it's not a lifetime experience.
Speaker 2:Some cultures, birth is much more woven into their day to day, in their culture. They see it, they talk about it different times in our history it has had different places in the day to day life. But at this point we can kind of put it in a box, kind of compartmentalizing, keep it over there, and sometimes we go over there and we open up that box, but most people kind of keep that box over there. So kind of consider where your sentiments, your own personal culture comes about. Birth, your family will influence that. Media influence that. Where you live influences that. Your access to healthcare, medical care, education is going to influence that as well. But media definitely media is going to influence that. So TV shows, movies, social media, pop culture all of this influences our cultural, our mass cultural beliefs about birth and our expectations around it.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times from the media and you got to remember, right, they're selling something, they got to make it exciting and entertaining and so oftentimes it reinforces fear or drama or medicalization around childbirth. Um. So movies, like in movies and television, what you often see, what's often portrayed, is what childbirth looks like. It sounds like it's a woman screaming, right, like she's frantic, um, she's out of control. Um, a lot of times we have the water breaking, the bag of water breaks, which you know, that's the amniotic sac releasing and it's in a grocery store and it's frantic. There's a frantic drive to the hospital, there's maybe emergency personnel involved and the baby's born in like three minutes, right. So it's high drama, right. Born in like three minutes, right. So it's high drama, right. But media, it's interesting. It doesn't just entertain us, it also teaches us. Whether it needs, it intends to or not. Even if it's inaccurate or incorrect, the media is teaching us things. And so if this is the only place you've gotten your quote, unquote education about childbirth maybe a health class in high school as well for one chapter, you're going to have some kind of misconceptions about what childbirth really is okay. So this, as we're talking about this, we're just kind of exploring and examining patterns in our pop culture we're not shaming individuals or industries by any means and how they view birth or portray birth. We're just kind of taking an exploratory look at our cultural, our community cultural beliefs about birth. So some common media.
Speaker 2:You know that we see some kind of themes about childbirth. Is the water breaking emergency, right? That it's sudden, it's dramatic, it's usually in a public place and that labor is going to begin immediately. You're going to be into the throes of labor seconds after the water breaks. Now, that is not how it happens for most people. For some yes, I have had some clients their water breaks and the baby comes very soon after. It's usually never ever a first baby. It might be second, third or fourth babies. That come quickly after the water breaks, and that's good to know, you know, be prepared for that. But generally speaking the water breaks and nothing happens. We just kind of hang out for a while, right.
Speaker 2:Another thing that we see happening a lot is a screaming woman, this out of control, panicked woman screaming. A lot of times she's telling her partner like did this to me? Like she's having massive regrets, um, she's hating the moment. She's obviously in distress. Um, she's pushing blame onto someone. Um, she's kind of lost her head and she's always on her back, usually, um, her legs are up in stirrups. She's draped, of course it's television, so they're gonna yourups. She's draped, of course it's television, so they're going to, you know, have a pretty well draped and covered. Um, there's generally a male doctor who's coaching her or yelling at her, calming her down. So that's a common, you know, portrayal of birth in the media as well. Inaccurate, I can say. I have, I've heard, I have heard screaming, screaming like once, like my ears hurt, you know, but I've never, ever seen a woman say you did this to me and be out of control, panicked and yelling like that, never seen that Another common portrayal is a useless or panicked partner, right.
Speaker 2:So this partner, who's kind of maybe for comic relief but just not a source of support, is kind of roaming about the room, not helpful, and that is fun, like that's a. You know, we have the court jester role that needs to be played by someone, but also that's not super accurate. A lot of times the partners are very invested, very involved. They may feel panicked on the inside, but they usually are not useless or running around with nothing to do. They're really pretty focused and focused on support.
Speaker 2:Another thing we see a lot of times is the birth is fast, right, like the baby's born in five minutes. The labor is a sudden event. It's not a long process and I think that miscommunication right there surprises people and provides them the most challenges. When I work with people and when they hear how long labor is, like some people will just want it to end just because of time, for no other reason that it's been too much time and they aren't aware that birth can take time. And think about movies. Movies, you know, are a couple of hours and the birth scene in a movie is far shorter than that.
Speaker 2:Right, sitcoms, when birth is portrayed in our sitcoms, a sitcom's what? 20, 30 minutes Birth is not right. They have to fit an entire birth event and the labor process into a sitcom. So of course, it's going to be condensed. It'll be much more condensed and much shorter, but that trips people up. They're like why is this taking so long? Especially, people want inductions. They think, oh, awesome, I'm going to get an induction, have a baby by this afternoon. I'm like or tomorrow or the next day, you know there's, I think, people are not aware of truly the time it takes to go into labor and to go through the process and have a baby. So that fast birth probably not going to happen. Yes, it happens, but not often.
Speaker 2:Another very common theme is crisis and chaos. Right, very rarely do we see in the media a calm, physiologic birth where that mom is in control, where she's perfectly supported by the team around her, where she's in charge. She, while she might be the central figure in a lot of media portrayal especially when we're talking about, like um, scripted media portrayal right, so she might be the central figure, but she's not often the power figure. There's another power figure she's not. It's not, it's not centered around her, she's not the in charge of her own event, whereas a lot of times In birth the mom is the central figure, especially in just normal physiologic birth, right? So a normal, calm, physiologic birth, which I love to see we don't get it every time for sure, because there are a lot of interventions depending on where we're giving birth A birth that's well supported and has amazing, compassionate, competent providers with a great supportive partner.
Speaker 2:We don't see that in the media very often that touches on some emotions Like, oh, see that in the media. Very often that touches on some emotions Like, oh, that's sweet, that was tender, that was awesome. Like we want those emotions but they're not sensational, so a lot of times they're not going to be used. So think of the shows, movies, shows. Some of them are getting to be pretty old now, some of them are much newer, like Friends, grey's Anatomy, Knocked Up, call the Midwife. These are some places where birth and we'll talk in a minute about some more contemporary ones as well where birth has been portrayed, and I love this little piece of history going back in time. Gosh, probably 75 years now, or nearly so.
Speaker 2:The first time that a pregnant woman was shown on television was in the 1950s. It was very much against cultural norms to show pregnancy or even allude to it on television, and lucille ball was doing I love lucy, she had two babies while she was doing that show and wanted to continue doing the show and the network said nope, we can't have that. She insisted, she said no, I'm going to keep doing the show. Um, and seen pregnant on television. So that was the first time. Like she kind of broke some social norms there. But the concession was they were not allowed to use the word pregnant. It was worse than a lot of things I guess you could do or say on television was to refer to pregnancy. So I think the word they used was expecting. So that was groundbreaking at the time, right, and if you know the episode when she was having the baby, her husband, ricky Ricardo, is in the waiting room. He was doing a show that night, so he's all kinds of dressed up. He's fallen into that theme of a useless, panicked partner and that was at a time when partners weren't in the room, right, so accurate to the time of how childbirth was then. So that started it. And then that brings us to where we are today with the kind of unrealistic, quite unrealistic themes that we see.
Speaker 2:So media is often the first and the most repeated exposure people get to labor and birth before they actually experience it personally. So that can oftentimes what's portrayed can kind of get us prepared for urgency and fear and dependence on intervention. It really over-medicalizes a lot of birth, while there is a ton of medical intervention in many birth experiences. This teaches us that that's the absolute norm. It kind of positions the birthing person as passive, right. Something's happening to them. They're not active, they're not taking an active role in their experience. And it also kind of skews who we see giving birth. Right, think about who you see giving birth. Often it's a white woman. It's going to be a white woman giving birth in a hospital setting. That's going to be a white woman giving birth in a hospital setting. That's as I think about the media portrayals of birth I've seen. I can't think of anything other than that. Maybe, maybe you have I really don't watch a lot of media in my life but generally it's going to be just a white woman giving birth in a hospital. That's also not super accurate, right? There's lots of different birth settings and a whole lot more people than white women give birth for sure.
Speaker 2:And those culture influences come into that too, which can be a beautiful thing. I love how other cultures to bring in their pieces around childbirth as well. So all of these perspective influence expectations, right. They influence our anxiety levels around childbirth. They influence our trust or our lack of trust in the female body and how it gives birth, and or it influences our trust or lack of trust in the medical systems that surround that. This influences how partners should quote, unquote, should or often show up, right, they're kind of set to the side, so it can influence how partners are involved. It can influence how clinicians are viewed like oh you know, they absolutely know everything. They're the central figure in this. This can influence our birth plans and what we know or think is possible about childbirth.
Speaker 2:So we also have, of course, the phenomenon of social media and there are a lot of examples of birth and this gets more real, right, it's not as as scripted that you can find. I remember health class years ago used to be the only place you could, or a childbirth education class was the only place you could actually watch a childbirth um in video form, and now you could look up on youtube tiktok, like you can see 1 000 birth videos if you wanted to. They are out there and so that we do have access to a lot of and it's real, it's raw, those are like, oftentimes, real birth experiences, right, so we have people out there that offer it's more visible now, right, in real senses. It includes a lot of diversity, and you might see way more empowerment in social media's portrayals of childbirth than anything else. There's some really positive birth content out there, talking about VBACs or midwives or birth centers or water birth or physiologic birth, right, or supported hospital birth or whatever that might be Some of these. However, we do have this as well. While we can edit all kinds of things they might have, they might kind of give us the effect of having a perfect birth or an aesthetically beautiful birth, right, um, some influencers are going to show us exactly you know what what they script their birth to be. Um, but birth can be messy, like it really can be pretty messy, and, and some of our videos definitely show that um it, it might show graphic content without context, right, and so you don't see the whole picture, know, the whole picture. That can feel kind of overwhelming and, and so sometimes you know, we got some unregulated misinformation there and information that can kind of spread and have an impact as well. So let's talk about what we want to see, what we need to see, what will be important to see as we change the narrative, the cultural narrative on mass levels about childbirth.
Speaker 2:I love it when birth can be portrayed as normal, as powerful and varied, like we're not going to. Birth shouldn't look any one way. It can look a lot of different ways. I love it when birth is portrayed that there's diverse families, there's diverse settings. We have home birth, birth centers, hospitals. Some people do free birth, also recognizing, realizing that outcomes are different. Sometimes a NICU stay is involved, sometimes an ambulance ride is involved. Those are realities. They're not always the norm, thank goodness.
Speaker 2:Knowing that different bodies give birth it's not just always a gorgeous actress who's a white woman giving birth, but lots of different types of bodies give birth. Um, bringing consent into that Some of the portrayals in the media there's no consent, right, this woman's out of her mind, screaming and people are doing things to her. But knowing that consent is an important part of it. Autonomy is Informed, choices are important. Knowing that women are oftentimes in childbirth very calm and collected, very strong. They're very, very infrequently is there actually panic or chaos. Birth is usually pretty beautiful and chill right, like yes, it's difficult, but nobody's running around the room going crazy like we often see in the media. While that's entertaining, it might not be realistic. So I all the time when I work with clients as they're preparing for birth, a lot of them say I had to get off Google, I had to get off Instagram, I had to get off TikTok, because even what they're finding there might not be helpful to them, right?
Speaker 2:So be really intentional about the kind of media that you consume. That's going to impact your culture and your feelings about childbirth. Hopefully it's for the positive. Look for what you want, and a lot of people are gravitated to what they want. Sometimes your consumption of social media around childbirth will change how you want to do things right. They can persuade you to do things a different way. And then debrief with someone who really works in that and knows what's real and what's not real.
Speaker 2:I think it's fascinating watching any kind of childbirth portrayed in videos or in media of some kind, especially when it's scripted right and we have actors doing it. When it's not real people and real birth, there's some inaccuracies, for sure. When things are absolutely not possible, that might be portrayed, but get into the real stories right. Talk to people about their real stories and a lot of times people focus on trauma. So don't just focus on the trauma, but pull out the positive of other people's birth stories, whether it's someone you're having a real conversation with or somebody you are watching on social media. So use social media responsibly as you prepare for childbirth.
Speaker 2:So again, go back to where your first impressions of childbirth, labor and delivery came from. Your first impressions of childbirth, labor and delivery came from. Where are they built? By media? How accurate is that? Are they built by your family, your community, culture, the education you've been exposed to or not been exposed to, and go out and kind of do some digging and some exploring. Sometimes you might need to unlearn some things, and that's okay. Sometimes you learn some new things.
Speaker 2:As I teach childbirth classes, either privately or in the hospital, I love seeing the lights go on in people's head Like wow, really I didn't know that, I didn't know that was possible, or you can ask for that or how that worked and I love just seeing a curious learner you know whether that's moms, dads, whoever's supporting the birthing person. It's awesome to see those lights go on, because birth can and should be positive, empowering and impactful in people's lives, in all the lives that are involved with that. So take a good look at where your views come from and maybe do some unlearning of what media has taught us. So a couple interesting things now, as we look at current. You know some much more recent portrayals Pieces of a Woman was in 2020. Maybe you have watched that, but that's a home birth gone tragically wrong, so that does some teaching about home birth. There's a pretty visceral performance on there House of the Dragon, if you've seen that. From 2022, there's a very graphic medieval c-section where both the mom and the baby die, so that does some teaching to us.
Speaker 2:There's a TV series Dead Ringers 2023, talks about a doctor, two doctors who perform natural births and c-sections, and they're often way more intentionally actually more bloody and anatomically raw than real birth is right. So birth generally isn't very bloody at all. Grey's Anatomy you know the season finale. That one's a pretty popular one, but it's a very dramatic birth scene during a blackout and a storm. So very high emotion, high drama and birth can be high emotion, for sure, but this is meant for entertainment, um. So other ones 2022 we have this is going to hurt.
Speaker 2:Um, it kind of shows, you know, that that birth is messy, chaotic, um, so, yeah, that kind of think of even star wars. You know we have in star wars, um, where padme gives birth to twins and she dies. You know she has a tragic death, death after that and an interesting one. That's been pretty iconic and it's a much older one, is alien, from 1979. That's not even a human childbirth but, um, it's a pretty visceral birth scene and one of the most iconic birth scenes in media. So these like it's cultural storytelling, right, it's, it's playing on fear and fascination.
Speaker 2:But kind of go back to some real, look at some real births and see what birth is like as you plan for, prepare and shift your culture around birth, labor, birth and delivery, because our society has a ways to go in making that a positive experience for any and all of us. Hopefully this has been helpful and you can kind of explore where your culture comes from about childbirth and hopefully you can move forward and make an impact in your life for others. That to make it more positive. It's an awesome part of our culture. We all do it At some point. We're all involved in childbirth. Thanks for being with me here today on the Ordinary Doula podcast. This is Angie Rozier, glad to spend this little bit of time with you and, as always, reach out to someone who's been meaningful in your life, let them know it, thank them and make that human connection today. See you next time. Have a great day wherever you are, whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1:I hope it's a good one. Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Doula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.