“Pregnant” is Not a Character Trait

I’ve been a birth doula for over ten years. I have a group chat with other birthworkers where the main theme is “look at how shitty this portrayal of birth is,” in a certain tv show or movie.  With a link to a clip or an article. 

As birth workers, we are constantly helping folks overcome the terror they feel around pregnancy and birth. The things that people witness via media have them believing that pregnancy is a minefield of complications and birth is a barely managed chaos of pain where you barely escape the clutches of death. 

The fear that our clients come into pregnancy with is one of the main topics of conversation among us. So when I set out writing my debut novel—Buzzard—a dystopian sci-fi about a midwife. I knew that my main mission was to accurately portray birth and pregnancy in  a way that I haven’t seen before, especially in sci-fi. 

So I started thinking about all the popular tropes and how they are employed in the media to elicit certain reactions in us viewers/readers/consumers. 

Pregnant People are People too.

When a character becomes pregnant on a TV show or movie, they often lose their personality and motivations and become a vehicle for drama. 

In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Padme Amydala (a senator) becomes pregnant and basically loses her personality and role as a progressive Senator for the Galactic Republic and becomes a biological vehicle literally carrying the future plot. Gone are her political intrigues and slick ninja outfits for battle. Now that she is pregnant she is relegated to gauzy dusters and far away glances. She has about 20 mins of screen time in which she laments the death of democracy, then she dies on the table–of a broken heart–after birthing her two babies while screaming. 

Being pregnant does not immediately endow personality traits. Much like having cancer doesn’t mean you are quiet, reflective, delicate, and tired. Or being an army veteran doesn’t immediately make you depressed and traumatized. Pregnant people are still themselves. They don’t immediately want to wear a floral maxi-dress and pose in front of the ocean (some do, and that’s great). I think the best example I’ve seen in popular culture in last thirty years is the movie Juno. 

In which the FMC is just herself but with a new problem to solve. She is going about it in a way that is uniquely her. That movie is a great example of pregnancy being part of the character’s internal and external journey. The pregnancy is a visual metaphor for Juno slowly coming of age. 

Which brings me to my next subject…

Pregnancy as a plot device.

A lot of movie writers use pregnancy like they would a ticking time bomb in an action film. Pregnant characters in western media are seen as vulnerable grenades just waiting to either die or finally fulfill their destiny by becoming mothers and parents.  

This negative fictional portrayal of a biological human process perpetuates the mindset of deleting the personhood of the parent in favor of the personhood of the unborn baby. 

Moving on. 

In the early 00s I was addicted to TLCs ‘16 and pregnant.’ In which young women are either laughed at or pitied. 

The main theme of this show was: Look at these dumb young women who don’t know what they are doing and all the doctors, family members and nurses that save them and their babies. Don’t be like them! 

In every episode there is usually a car ride or an ambulance ride with dramatic music.The common thread is that the pregnant character is reduced to a single note trope with the sole purpose of inviting the viewer to either laugh at her or be afraid for her life or (more importantly) for the life of her baby. 

Now, I know it’s TV and they have to dial the stakes all the way up to keep the audience from flipping between commercial breaks (this was back in the dark ages of cable times) but, what did that do to me as a pre-pubescent girl who was raised Catholic and about to get her period? 

Childbirth terrified me for the longest time. Womanhood terrified me. It seemed so scary that I would suddenly become vulnerable, weak and useless. Or a complete bitch! 

A survey of modern media was done in 2016 by Biomed Central of the current media showing representations of birth and pregnancy.  Their findings in summary are thus: 

…reality television (TV) programmes often portray birth as risky, dramatic and painful and this effects how childbirth is perceived in society directly effecting birth outcomes [2]. It has been suggested that television portrayals of birth influence decisions made by women (and their families) regarding delivery method (natural birth versus assisted birth including caesarean section), their expectations of the birth (dangerous versus serene), and best place of birth (hospital: considered safe but medicalised versus home considered natural/healthy) [3–9]. It is argued that these influences are in part responsible for the rising rates of interventions in childbirth.

https://rdcu.be/dYvCA  BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 

We have the data to support that high exposure to negative portrayal of birth in media directly affects birth outcomes, so why aren’t we showing something closer to reality? We, as artists, have the capacity. 

Are there realistic portrayals of Pregnancy in media? 

The pregnancy storyline can be captivating. It can magnify and enhance a character’s coming of age story or their complicated relationships between their birth and chosen families. There are many things a pregnancy storyline can do that aren’t perpetuating an antiquated ideology or gender tropes. 

Narratively, pregnancy can be a great plot device. Everyone has some amount of contact or context of pregnancy already looming in their psyche. It is so commonly human, yet can be so fraught with consequences for our lives and relationships. 

You have to make pregnancy/parenthood about the character’s interior journey first before you make it a plot device. 

In the first Terminator movie, Sara Connor is naive and a little lost. She struggles to feel confident in who she is and her purpose. Her pregnancy and its effects on her turn her into a stronger and more confident version of herself. Her inner journey to becoming a mother  in the dystopian world she is trying to survive in is what eventually builds her confidence to continue her mission. Parenthood enhances her journey but doesn’t make her who she already is. It’s not a trait, it's a struggle or an event she overcomes. 

Those types of hero narratives are what make unforgettable characters. We want to read about people going through serious transformation to become who they are. Because it’s what we have to do. And pregnancy storylines can be great devices for those characters. 

One of the best examples of this, and my favorite portrayal of pregnancy in literature is actually from a horror novel: Grady Heendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls. It follows a group of young women all sent away to a home for pregnant teens in eastern Florida in the 1960s. It’s gripping and fantastic but what really seals it for me is the imagery and realistic portrayal of pregnancy in the young women. The way they experience the physical sensations alongside the intense emotions is so rich and relatable. Pregnancy, for some, can feel like you are the hero in a horror novel. Experiencing the out of control and sudden changes in your body while society slowly shoves you into irrelevance, can feel horrific. I love to see the scary parts of pregnancy and birth represented in literature. It makes me feel less alone, and I know it will for others. 

What about realistic portrayals of Birth? 

The imperfect standard (IMHO) for at least attempting to portray birth realistically is the BBC classic: Call the Midwife. Say what you will about the unrealistic plotlines, at least the pregnant people in that show are portrayed as whole people with real lives outside of being pregnant: family drama, job insecurity, food insecurity, abusive partners, abusive mothers, unplanned pregnancy etc… Even the births are more realistic than the average show, featuring actual newborn babies, and a reasonable amount of grunting and blood. 

In life and in fictional stories, birth can be a portal for main characters. Even if they aren't the one giving birth. It’s a social event, like a wedding, not always a medical event. But if you looked just at western media, you would say it was definitely a medical event, not only a medical event, but a fucking terrifying emergency. And pregnant people are delicate or petulant; or tired and grumpy; or precious and distracted; or about to fucking die every minute of every day. 

There is an episode of Bluey that is banned in the US. It’s called ‘Dad Baby’ and it’s Bluey’s dad teaching his daughter all about how babies are born by pretending to have a baby himself. Disney will not say why it is banned. But my guess is because ‘men can’t have babies’ or some such ridiculousness that requires another blog post altogether. If you are squeamish but want a basic and concise explanation for what labor might look and sound like, watch this episode of Bluey (LINK). It’s a masterpiece. It is informative without fear mongering or dramatization. 

In western white culture, most babies are born in the hospital. Two percent or less are born outside of the hospital here in America. And post-covid restrictions usually limit visitors in hospitals to one or two people at most. 

So few of us are ever privileged enough to witness a live human birth. But they show up in books and movies all the time. Especially if we are writing into the past. 

In Anna Karenina by Tolstoy the famous birth scene is often lifted up as the pinnacle of human birth in literature. So often praised for its nuanced take on the mystery and grotesque realities of the process. All of this is told from the perspective of Levin, Kitty’s partner. A man, observing Kitty as she struggles through a grueling labor. He waffles between terror and disgust and finally lands on revulsion as Kitty screams between life and death. The perspective of this scene is the most troubling to me. Levin observes Kitty with a lack of curiosity and respect. It further perpetuates the idea that birth is a mysterious horror show that we can only be afraid of. That women are the manic pixie dream girls fraught with the burden of childbirth. It’s what I lovingly dub: the biblical “Eve Syndrome.”  If a woman gets too intelligent and powerful, we must hobble her with the supposed disease of human birth. (i.e. Padme Amydala)

In contrast, the opening scene in The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon depicts the very normal, healthy and safe labor of Betsy Clark’s third daughter. We live in the perspective of Martha Ballard, a seasoned midwife who has ‘never lost a mother in childbirth.’ The birth scene itself is warm and realistically not without struggle. Betsy cries, moans, and bleeds quite a lot. However the babe is born healthy and well. The family carries on. It’s the boring miracle of everyday life in 18th century New England. As the opening scene of the book it is doing a lot. It sets us up with the stakes the main character is dealing with, her  normal response to stress, and her position in the community. Betsy goes on to be a nuanced character full of contradictions. A powerful member of her community. But also, flawed. A human! 

Birth can add stakes to a timeline, depth and meaning to a character’s life and dynamic tension between family members. 

Birth scenes can be beautiful, funny, scary and transformational for characters. The birth of a baby can tear people apart and bring others together. Again, it’s an excellent narrative device. 

I want to mention Witchcraft for Wayward Girls when talking about birth scenes because Grady did an amazing job showing what birth was actually like in the 1960s American Hospital. To be fair, the horror is dialed up and amplified but it contains so much truth. Good horror magnifies our fears of real threats. A real threat to humans is the way we are ignored, mistreated in the medical industrial complex. 

 The way the young mother is treated in this particular birth scene is very close to the way you can still expect to be treated now. How terrified and alone the main character feels in that scene, how little is explained to her, and how little agency she is afforded is not far from the reality of modern hospital births. The horror in this scene comes from the lack of agency and knowledge the character has about labor and birth. Yet, she survives, and is changed by it. She is finally able to advocate for herself and her baby after she wakes up. She grows up emotionally and begins understanding the ways in which she has been harmed, and she is, in fact, the innocent one. This scene is a great example of using a birth to enhance character growth and theme expansion. The birth of her baby is a character turning point. No where else in the book is it more apparent how disenfranchised young women are, how little our society values their voices and their lives than in the way the MC is treated at this hospital. 

What I love generally about the story line of this book is that the most disenfranchised characters become the most powerful in the end. They started out as so afraid, but then they become the monsters to be feared. And that, to me, is a truly feminist plot. The thing that makes us different is the thing that makes us powerful. The transformation of pregnancy and birth doesn’t weaken us, it actually makes us stronger. 

But the birth part has to be depicted well and accurately so you don’t lose your audience and your characters to one-dimensional tropes. 

As writers we can’t cheaply use birth and pregnancy as a device to try and make a character more sympathetic or make their demise more terrifying.

How do we write pregnancy accurately and well?  To start we can read and absorb realistic depictions of it in books and media. 

Below you will find a list of everything I’ve mentioned in this post plus more. 

My debut novel, Buzzard,  comes out Fall ‘26 with Left Unread and Bindery Books. Content Hospital will be promoting the pre-order link here on the website, and on our social media. 

Read: 

Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens

Like A Mother AND Essential Labor  by Angela Garbes 

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (Skip the Film)

Little Labors by Rivka Galchen

Samantha Hunt’s A Love Story  (short story)
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix