When Empowerment Misses the Mark: Pitfalls in Birth Support Empowerment
Empowerment lies at the heart of birth professionals’ work and is one of the primary goals in supporting expectant and new parents. Empowering means instilling confidence, fostering autonomy, and equipping individuals with the tools to make decisions about their birthing and parenting experiences. Empowering expectant and new parents is about letting them feel seen, heard, and engaged—trusting they have the knowledge, strength, and autonomy to navigate the challenges of childbirth and early parenthood. However, sometimes empowerment misses the mark and bears pitfalls. Empowerment takes more than encouraging and informing; it’s about cultivating internal authority and ownership. That’s precisely what Transformational Birth Support Coaching helps individuals undergoing childbearing feel.
Empowerment and advocacy are conjoined
Empowerment and advocacy are deeply interconnected for many birth workers. Empowerment focuses on helping parents make informed decisions and trust their instincts, fostering a sense of control over their experiences. On the other hand, advocacy involves actively supporting and championing the parents’ rights, preferences, and needs, particularly when they face challenges or barriers within the healthcare system.
When done effectively, advocacy reinforces empowerment by amplifying individuals’ voices and ensuring their choices are respected. Similarly, empowerment strengthens advocacy by equipping parents with the knowledge and confidence to articulate their preferences. Together, they create a dynamic relationship where birth workers help families feel capable and protected, balancing guidance with the autonomy necessary for a positive and transformative experience.
Empowerment takes more than encouraging and informing; it’s about cultivating internal authority and ownership
Masterful empowerment goes beyond advocacy
When birth support empowerment is practiced with skill and mastery, it fosters satisfaction with one’s childbearing experience, regardless of the outcomes or how the journey unfolds. Embracing the unpredictability of childbearing is essential when empowering expectant and new parents. True empowerment emphasizes the process – how individuals participated, engaged, and remained mindful throughout rather than achieving specific desired outcomes. As a prenatal coach, I model this principle by introducing a new language – birth vision instead of birth plan. Through a series of prenatal coaching sessions, I empower my clients by asking thoughtful questions and actively listening to their insights. Rather than positioning myself as an expert in “how to have a positive birth experience,” I serve as their partner, allowing them to experience themselves as the true experts in their lives. This approach not only helps them cultivate a strong sense of agency and confidence as they navigate their unique journey, but it trains them to voice their thoughts and expect to be heard and seen by their medical providers.
Poorly executed empowerment
When empowerment is done poorly, it can negatively impact those going through the childbearing process and create a harmful atmosphere around them. Below are some of the potential pitfalls to watch out for:
- Creating Dependency: Clients might rely on the labor coach or other birth worker for validation or decision-making instead of fostering agency. I suspect the result of this dynamic is especially harmful to labor doulas in situations of a potential deviation from their client’s birth plan. Clients who rely on their doulas will ask: “What do you think I should do?” or even say, “Tell me what to do.” In these cases, doulas risk practicing outside of their scope of practice and can potentially experience tension with the medical staff. In this case, advocacy is in contrast with actual empowerment. The goal would be to empower clients prenatally, helping them develop an internal authority and agency.
- Overconfidence: Providing excessive encouragement without addressing realistic limitations can lead to overconfidence, poor decisions, or failure.
When doulas or other birth workers coach their clients, encouraging them to aspire for what’s not available in reality. One example is when, prenatally, a client is encouraged to arrive at the hospital for her birth and tell the nurse,” I don’t want medical care; I came only to be watched.”
I feel doula empowerment must comply with what’s available to be real empowerment that helps people achieve their desired experiences. - Lack of Clarity: Misguiding clients with vague or unstructured empowerment can leave them confused or uncertain about their goals. For example, an “unmedicated birth,” a “natural birth,” or an “Unassisted birth” are concepts that need to be well-defined and distinguished from each other. Even when you think you fully understand and agree with your client about “natural childbirth” as the ultimate experience, I believe you’d be at a better place after conducting an inquiry, clarifying what it means for your client:
- What happens in a natural childbirth?
- How do you think it feels to have a natural childbirth?
- Can you write five sentences starting with Natural Birth is…
These are just a few examples of clarifying the client’s goals.
A series of prenatal coaching sessions helps clients adopt new perspectives that are more supportive of their desires.
- Pushing Personal Agendas: Empowerment can feel coercive and undermine autonomy when it reflects the coach’s priorities rather than the client’s. I suspect most birth support pros have been pushing the agenda of natural childbirth for decades. The results were frustrating—we’ve all supported clients who marked on their birth plans choices they couldn’t follow during their birth and goals they weren’t able to achieve because their beliefs, values, and perspectives were not aligned with their preferences. Ideally, we will clarify our clients’ beliefs, values, attitudes, strengths, and limitations before empowering them to pursue an experience that is not available to them. A series of prenatal coaching sessions is the perfect opportunity to help clients adopt new perspectives that are more supportive of their desires.
- Ignoring Emotional Readiness: Empowerment that doesn’t consider a client’s emotional state may overwhelm them or cause setbacks. An excellent example in our field would be holding a client accountable for avoiding pain meds when they’ve been in labor for 40 hours or keeping a new mom suffering postpartum depression to exclusive breastfeeding. In both cases, empowering the individuals to stick to their prenatal decisions with no regard to their emotional condition is rigid. It might lead to self-disappointment or a sense of failure.
Effective empowerment requires active listening, a client-centered approach, and partnership. These are all core principles of Transformational Birth Support Coaching. Click here to watch our Free intro webinar series and learn more about this innovative approach to birth support and empowerment.
- When Empowerment Misses the Mark: Pitfalls in Birth Support Empowerment - November 19, 2024
- Labor Coach VS. Transformational Birth Support Coach: What’s the Difference? - August 28, 2024
- Overshadowing the Transformative Essence of Childbirth with Data - July 10, 2024
