Birth preparation
Why more birth information is leaving parents more afraid
Doula and educator Nadine Richardson explains why fear of birth keeps rising, and why claiming your own mind matters as much as any fact.
The She Births Book Launch — Live from Bondi with Nadine & Jessica Chapnik Kahn
Video from She Births® Education | Nadine Richardson.
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Why are expectant parents more afraid of birth when they have more information than ever?
Nadine Richardson says parents now arrive at birth classes carrying more information but more fear, much of it absorbed from social media and frightening stories. Information alone stays shallow. Real preparation pairs evidence with an understanding of the body, a calm nervous system and the work of questioning the beliefs each parent brings to birth.
Nadine Richardson has spent more than 20 years as a doula and childbirth educator in Australia, and in that time she has watched something change in the people who walk into her classes. Parents today can read more about birth than any generation before them. Yet, she says, many of them arrive more frightened than ever, not more ready.
She spoke about this shift at the live launch of her book in Bondi, Sydney, in a conversation with her close friend Jessica Chapnik Kahn. In front of family, colleagues and the families she has supported, she described a culture where fear of birth has grown into something close to a collective chronic phobia.
Her answer is not to hide the hard parts of birth or to promise that every birth can be beautiful. Instead, she argues that parents need to protect their own minds, understand what their bodies are doing in labour, and have a team around them that helps them feel safe enough to make their own decisions.
Key takeaways
- More information has not made parents calmer; many now arrive at birth classes more afraid than before.
- Social media and frightening birth footage feed a quiet, chronic anxiety in expectant parents.
- Feeling safe matters in labour, because the hormones that drive birth work best when fear is low.
- Good preparation pairs evidence with self-reflection, so parents can question the beliefs they bring to birth.
1. More facts, more fear
Nadine Richardson expected that easy access to information would make parents more confident about birth. Over two decades of teaching, she has seen the opposite. People come into her course with phones full of facts and stories, yet they are often more anxious than the parents she taught when she began. About eight years ago, she says, it started to feel like a collective chronic phobia was building.
She links much of that fear to what she calls the black mirror: the phone in every pocket, with endless footage and birth stories a tap away. The constant scroll of dramatic clips and dopamine hits shapes how parents think about their bodies and their births long before labour begins. What reaches them is rarely the calm, ordinary birth that never goes viral online.
She also sees birth being pulled to extremes online. On one side sit the loud, radical versions of birth that algorithms reward. On the other are parents who respond by trying to control every detail so they can feel safe. Both reactions, she says, can come from fear, and both can leave parents carrying distorted agendas into the birth room.
2. Why the mind matters in labour
For Nadine Richardson, the reason this matters is biological as well as emotional. The brain is highly plastic during pregnancy, birth and the first years after, which makes parents more open to growth but also more vulnerable to negativity. She is clear that this is not about painting sunny pictures, because birth hurts for most women and it is real work.
Labour depends on what she calls a hormonal orchestration, led by oxytocin and endorphins, and that process needs the nervous system to feel safe. Fear can sit in the body and interrupt it. Women are especially sensitive to the people around them, including authority figures, which is why the mood of the birth room and the confidence of the birth team carry so much weight.
That is also why she wants partners prepared, not just reassured. When a partner understands what is driving labour, the support they give is more present and more useful. There will be moments when the birthing woman cannot speak and should not have to, so someone she trusts, whether a partner or a doula, needs to be ready to speak for her.
3. Claiming your own mind
One of the chapters Nadine Richardson is proudest of in She Births: Your practical guide to a beautiful birth is called Claiming Your Own Mind. It asks parents to go deeper than affirmations and look honestly at the beliefs they have inherited about their bodies, their sexuality, their relationships and their own sense of agency, because any of these can become hurdles in labour.
She draws a firm line between information and education. Facts on their own, she says, tend to keep people on a shallow level. Real birth education brings in depth, wisdom and stories that let parents see themselves, so they can make embodied decisions on questions such as induction, give real consent, speak up when needed and reduce the risk of regret.
She also points to the stakes for parents today. She says induction and caesarean rates have each doubled in roughly two decades, and that a large share of women in New South Wales describe their births as traumatic, much of it from how they were treated and spoken to. Preparing the mind, she argues, is part of how parents protect themselves inside the system.
