Fear-Based Practice: When Birth Is Treated Like a Crisis Waiting to Happen
In the birth space, language matters. One of the most telling—and troubling—phrases I hear is “failure to progress.” It implies dysfunction in the birthing body, a failure to meet some arbitrary standard. But more often than not, it’s not the birthing person who is failing—it’s the system. It’s our collective failure to wait. In our maternity culture, there’s an undercurrent of fear that shapes the way care is delivered. Fear of litigation. Fear of deviation from protocol. Fear of “getting it wrong.” So we intervene early. We act “just in case.” And we frame any variation from the expected timeline as pathology rather than physiology. Recently, I supported a woman planning to birth in a midwife-led birth centre. Her labour began gently and steadily. She was coping beautifully, working with her body through a slow but meaningful early labour. But as time wore on and she didn’t dilate “fast enough,” the midwives shifted. Their suggestions moved away from reassurance and presence, and ...
