Childbirth in a Technocratic Age: The Documentation of Women’s Ex ...

In a most general sense, experiences deviating from earlier expectations symbolize randomness and unpredictability, and that sense, in turn, presumably leads to the negative emotions often tied to expectancy violations (Olson, Roese, & Zanna, 1996). As a process involving a woman’s physical self as well as that of her fetus—not to mention her family and care providers and institutions—childbirth would seem, at least on the surface, to carry a particularly high likelihood of some unexpected occurrence. Not surprising, then, is the report that mothers’ childbirth experiences generally violate their expectations (Gibbins & Thomson, 2001). Along similar lines, previous childbirth experience does not necessarily lead to better matched expectations and experiences (Booth & Meltzoff, 1984; Stolte, 1987), though primiparous (first-time) mothers may hold less realistic expectations of personal control over the childbirth process (Green, Coupland, & Kitzinger, 1998).

Poorly matched childbirth expectations and experiences are associated with negative maternal emotional consequences. For example, researchers Ayers and Pickering (2005) reported that poorly matched childbirth expectations and experiences corresponded to negative maternal views on the birth experience overall, which extended to more intense postpartum pain reported by mothers whose childbirth expectations were violated. Increasingly, a poor match between expectations and experiences involves the application of some unanticipated obstetric treatment, such as labor acceleration and episiotomy (treated in detail later in this chapter), which has been associated with lower maternal satisfaction with childbirth (Slade, MacPherson, Hume, & Maresh, 1993).

Some would argue that mothers have only limited influence or control over the degree to which their childbirth experiences match their expectations because birth is a complex physiological process involving multiple players. Yet according to Fiske and Taylor (1991), simply holding more or less positive expectations does seem to have some influence, and this effect has been demonstrated in birthing mothers. For example, among a large number of Belgian and Dutch mothers, those holding high expectations for good birth experiences in turn reported better childbirth experiences overall, and this held particularly true for those birthing at home