Parenthood in Childbirth: Reports by Mothers and Fathers

Abstract

Nowadays childbirth care in Brazil is mainly guided by the technocratic model, with a high rate of unnecessary interventions that may cause iatrogenesis. Emotional aspects inherent to birth tend to be disregarded in this scenario, which produces risks for the psychological health of the mother, father, and baby. The aim of this study was to look into the subjective experiences of fathers and mothers regarding childbirth in contemporary Brazil. For this purpose, a collective case study was carried out in which 30 birth reports published on personal blogs were analyzed, 15 written by women and 15 by men. The results pointed to the helplessness experienced by fathers and mothers in the face of technocratic care which may sometimes be violent, and to the idealization of health care professionals who work according to the humanized paradigm. The choice of the mode of delivery often appeared in the subjects’ discourse, denoting a scenario in which caesarean section is understood as a consumer good. Respect for the temporality of childbirth was considered essential to ensure that giving birth is not experienced in a traumatic way, and pain was reported as a central element to elaborate the symbolic death intrinsic to the process of parenthood appropriation. The lack of support from the environment seems to be a constitutive factor in the experience of obstetric violence and the writing of birth reports a resource to reinterpret this traumatic experience. We came to the conclusion that it is extremely important that the professional team be trained to understand the emotional aspects present in the childbirth experience, with interdisciplinary exchanges being a powerful resource to provide good quality of care for the parental couple.