Can We Please Stop Stereotyping Pregnant Women?
If “nesting” did not exist, you would not be reading this story
Humanity possesses an incredibly short memory. Of course, people can remember events that occurred decades ago, they recall the details of conversations they had in infancy, they can learn songs, speak multiple languages, repeat hundreds of different procedures. However, all these abilities are confined by their own lonely life. They can learn from the past by listening to grandpa telling them about the first world war. They study history at school. They are conscious of the fact that the world they know has not always been the same. But still, it seems they are not fully aware that their habits, language skills, technical abilities, and instincts, lay the foundation on ancient impulses. The same impulses that allowed our species to make it through until now.
It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
(Charles Darwin)
NESTING IN ANIMALS
Nowadays, humans invest precious reproductive resources in just a few offspring, who remain vulnerable for an extended period of their lifetimes relative to other primates. Their autonomy is also very low when compared to other species. Baby chimpanzees, for example, are able to hold onto their mothers backs as they search their surroundings for food and are fully self-sufficient at 5 years of age; human babies, by contrast, are unable to lift their heads until almost 3 months of age.
Despite these differences, all mammal species evolved starting from a condition in which, since the very first moment following the parturition, mothers and their newborns were constantly at risk of harm. Danger could come from both predators and conspecific males, but also natural pathogens and climatic elements. Thus, the space in which the birth and first hours postpartum take place gained fundamental importance. One adaptation used by some mammalians in order to safeguard the birth, and the newborn offspring, is nesting.
Nesting is strongly dependent on female hormonal flows. In pregnant and lactating rabbits, for instance, nest-building behaviors (digging, straw-carrying, fur-pulling) may be regulated in a controlled manner by changing concentrations of hormones such as estradiol, progesterone, and prolactin (González-Mariscal et al., 2016). Similarly, a state of high progesterone and very low estrogen is probably the hormonal situation eliciting ‘maternal’ nest-building in pregnant mice (Lisk et al., 1969). Given this evidence, it is not surprising women’s fluctuating hormonal peaks and lows may result in behavioral tendencies that recall other mammals’ strivings to establish a safe and protected environment to welcome their prole.
NESTING IN HUMANS
Human nesting consists of
“measurable change in behaviors and attitudes related to birth preparation that happens during pregnancy” (Anderson & Rutherford, 2013).
As an ancient legacy, the creation of a safe environment (nest) is crucial by its protective role; however, in humans, the emotional bonding arising from mother-infant closeness is functional for the development of a secure attachment. Secure attachment represents, in turn, a protective factor towards the rise of future psychopathology, since the better its quality, the most refined will be the child’s later acquisition of social and emotional skills (Benoit, 2004).
Curiously, nesting attitudes in human females have not been explored as much as in other mammal species. Despite this, also human preparatory maternal behaviors include decisions concerning both where the birth occurs, and who is permitted into the birthing environment. These two components are called, respectively, space preparation and social selectivity (Anderson & Rutherford, 2013).
Space preparation includes a focus on home renovations, completion of projects, and the purging and sorting of household items; it is often accompanied by energy bursts. Ridding the environment of unwanted items and choosing the ones to keep after the baby is born are also prioritized. In sum, space preparation is characterized by actions like stocking, organizing, packing and planning, all addressed towards the same goal: namely, the creation of the best-suited environment to welcome the newborn.
Social selectivity is also crucial for women in late pregnancy, to make sure the closeness with unreliable people will not endanger the dyad during the moments of the labor and the delivery. We might say nesting includes the sorting of people, as well as things. In nonhuman primates, delivery and initial care of the newborn often occur in partial or total isolation, which the mother seems actively to maintain (Trevathan & McKenna, 1994); similarly, women in the third trimester (when nesting behavior peaks) show a preference for being close to home, choose to spend time with kin and close friends, and tend to avoid proximity with new people and places (Anderson & Rutherford, 2013).
NESTING IN PRESS
I am not a mother. I have no experience with pregnancy at all. I had never deliberately searched for information about childbirth before; however, while doing some research to write this article, I noticed the number of forums and websites dedicated to mothers-to-be on the internet is incredibly high. Future moms’ concerns move from the shape of the belly to the choice of the name, from health problems to food aversions. The concept of nesting is also pretty debated within the mainstream discourse on pregnancy: however, reports in the popular press assert women experience nesting urges such as cleaning and disinfecting (or, to be exact, scrubbing the bathroom ceiling), much more often than displaying conducts like organizing and sorting.
Cleaning behaviors related to sanitation and pathogen avoidance are not absent in nesting, but organization and project completion are prioritized more highly. On one side, research showed pregnant women are more sensitive to cues denoting pathogen threat in the first trimester, when the fetus is more vulnerable (Navarrete et al., 2007): thus, in this particular period cleanliness seeking may overcome by importance other attitudes related to nesting. On the other side, the image of a pregnant, clumsy, disheveled woman compulsively wiping the floor of the living room falls into popular media representation of childbearing, and it is not hard to believe this may have contributed in shaping common stereotypes about pregnancy.
“the image of a pregnant, clumsy, disheveled woman compulsively wiping the floor of the living room falls into popular media representation of childbearing”
What’s more, nesting is rarely portrayed in a functional perspective. Besides the scientific explanation conceiving nesting as an adaptive behavior, it is not rare to bump into theories speculating compulsive childbirth preparation may result from the “born out of boredom and frustration”, since “busy work distracts mother from the fact they’ve been pregnant a zillion years”. Pointless to say, the fact that in those nine months mothers-to-be are more likely to experience such feelings cannot be denied (see the abundance of suggestions about how to deal with pregnancy boredom you can find on the web); on the other side, this is not what nesting is about.
WHY ARE TWISTED REPRESENTATIONS OF NESTING SO HARMFUL?
Women use the internet as a source of information about pregnancy, childbirth, and the expected baby. A Swedish study by Larsson (2009) highlighted 91% of the pregnant women interviewed had access to the Internet and, to a great extent (84%), used it to retrieve information, most often in the early stages of their pregnancy. This might not be a problem, if just the web only provided accurate knowledge concerning the topics of interest, without risking to promote those fears and insecurities that are typical of the pregnancy period. Unfortunately, this is not always the truth. In addition, internet reliability becomes particularly relevant since most women do not discuss the information they retrieved from the web with their health providers.
There are two reasons why distorted representations of nesting-related behaviors may be counterproductive. First, they contribute to the common trend striving towards the medicalization of pregnancy. Media representation of pregnancy, in fact, often solely focuses on the portrayal of risks and frightening aspects, like abnormal birth positions, hypertension and postpartum bleeding, or labor and delivery triage. Such presentations can be viewed as ‘disease mongering’’ because they suggest that such complications are prevalent, when they are not (Morris & McInerney, 2010). Also, they indirectly reinforce the idea standing to which women are unable to deal with this natural occurrence, emphasizing, by contrast, their lack of control, power, and autonomy on their bodies. Not the best way to help women feeling confident in approaching labor and parturition.
A similar thought can be applied to mental health. Hormonal flows in pregnancy objectively influence behavior. Nesting instincts have been fundamental for thousands of years to facilitate babies’ and mothers’ survival — and still are so. Allowing forums and message boards uncontrollably flourishing on the internet may help women to share their experience and emotionally support each other; on the other side, future mothers also involuntarily spread fake information, contributing to the rising of self-doubts about their mental capacity to manage their condition. Claims like
“it’s very common for the crazy hormones of pregnancy to exacerbate issues that we might have, like OCD or panic attacks or depression”
do not help women feeling better. They just foster anxiety, ending up with similar results to physical medicalization.
Besides negatively affecting the understanding of pregnancy, misrepresentation of nesting behaviors also damages women’s image itself. Portraying future mothers over-displaying conducts related to cleaning home and doing the laundry strongly reinforces stereotypes related to women’s domestic role. It is not a completely fake representation: simply, equally important elements are missed. Some examples: the impact of pregnancy on job experiences; the (just as important) partner’s role in house-keeping, even beyond pregnancy; they way pregnancy is experienced within different cultures, economic status, and ages; identities different from heterosexual women and married women.
Controlling and, possibly, limiting what people write in forums is a sensitive issue, because it clashes with the right of freedom of expression. One may technically write anything, even false claims, if these do not include insults nor defamations, and respect the website rules. On the other side, arming people with appropriate knowledge, coming from competent professionals and before they approach the internet, may result in a diminished spread of false information related to pregnancy. Explaining women they might experience attitudes associated with nesting instincts, and that these are due to hormonal flows, may contribute to normalizing what represents the basis of human life: pregnancy.
“…arming people with appropriate knowledge, coming from competent professionals and before they approach the internet, may result in a diminished spread of false information related to pregnancy.”
References
Anderson, M. V., & Rutherford, M. D. (2013). Evidence of a nesting psychology during human pregnancy. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(6), 390–397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.07.002
Benoit, D. (2004). Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Paediatrics and Child Health. Pulsus Group Inc. https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/9.8.541
González-Mariscal, G., Caba, M., Martínez-Gómez, M., Bautista, A., & Hudson, R. (2016, January 1). Mothers and offspring: The rabbit as a model system in the study of mammalian maternal behavior and sibling interactions. Hormones and Behavior. Academic Press Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.05.011
Larsson, M. (2009). A descriptive study of the use of the Internet by women seeking pregnancy-related information. Midwifery, 25(1), 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2007.01.010
Lisk, R. D., Pretlow, R. A., & Friedman, S. M. (1969). Hormonal stimulation necessary for elicitation of maternal nest-building in the mouse (Mus musculus). Animal Behaviour, 17(4), 730–737. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(69)80020-5
Morris, T., & McInerney, K. (2010). Media representations of pregnancy and childbirth: An analysis of reality television programs in the United States. Birth, 37(2), 134–140. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-536X.2010.00393.x
Navarrete, C. D., Fessler, D. M. T., & Eng, S. J. (2007). Elevated ethnocentrism in the first trimester of pregnancy. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(1), 60–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.06.002
Trevathan, W. R., & McKenna, J. J. (1994). Evolutionary Environments of Human Birth and Infancy: Insights to Apply to Contemporary Life. Children’s Environments, 11(2), 88–104. https://doi.org/10.2307/41514918
