7 signs of a woman with tokophobia

How to tell if you know a woman with tokophobia

Tokophobia is the extreme fear of pregnancy and birth. It’s not very well known and yet it can affect a lot of women. This extreme or pathological fear of birth is estimated to affect between 4 and 43% of women. 14% is an accepted estimate. So you see, a lot more common than you might think.

Sadly, many women with tokophobia avoid pregnancy despite being desperate to be mothers. But that doesn’t mean you won’t come across it.

Some women only realise they have tokophobia once they’re pregnant.

Up until that point, they might feel that “I’m just not maternal” or “I don’t like kids” which is something you hear a lot. However, both of these are typical comments made by women with tokophobia. It is simply their fear speaking.

Of course, there are also many women who simply don’t want kids who say these things. But it’s possible that when a woman says she doesn’t want kids that her fear is clouding her judgement, or that her true feelings are buried beneath the fear. Once she has overcome her tokophobia, she may very well change her mind. I’ve seen this a lot with the women I’ve worked with.

In fact, it was something that I used to say all the time. I recently met up with some people who I’d not seen for ten years and both of them told me how they would never have imagined that I would have had kids; they thought I didn’t want any! Well, that changed once I’d overcome my fears.

Why it's important to know if a woman has tokophobia

It can be easy to shrug this phobia off as silly or irrational, but doing that is missing the point. Many women with tokophobia don’t see this fear as irrational. You can actually die in childbirth: that’s something worth fearing. Compare that to claustrophobia; being trapped in an enclosed space is not known to be fatal.

The fact is, a woman with tokophobia would love a bit of kindness and understanding about how she's feeling. Having tokophobia can feel incredibly isolating because people don't understand and are quick to judge. Here's one woman's experience of sharing how she felt;

I just explained that I suffer from tokophobia and I was looking for some positive encouragement, maybe some stories from people who had been through it and could tell me some positive things. What I got instead was the nastiest group of mean girls I've encountered in a very long time. Seriously, these women jumped all over me. The pitchforks immediately came out. It was seriously upsetting!

I hope that by sharing this, that you can better understand what they're experiencing. If you have a wife or partner is tokophobic then maybe this post will help to explain things that you may have observed in your relationship. If you have friends who you suspect might have tokophobia then maybe this post will help you to better understand them.

7 signs of women with tokophobia

Not all women with tokophobia will experience all of these, but if a handful of them are present, then it’s a pretty good sign.

1. They avoid conversations of babies, pregnancy and birth

It’s often assumed that women love nothing better than to talk babies, but this simply isn’t true. Women with tokophobia will tend to remain silent if there is a group conversation that touches on babies, pregnancy or birth. They might do this because they simply have nothing to say and they can’t relate to what’s being said.

But it could also be that they daren’t say anything because of the possible reaction from other women. Very often, women with tokophobia find that when they speak up about how they’re feeling, that other women do not understand or shrug off their feelings. They might feel judged or ashamed so they keep quiet.

2. They don’t want to hold a baby

Holding a baby could easily freak them out and bring out quite a reaction. This means that they’ve probably never held a baby.

3. They have medical fears

Women with tokophobia tend to have one or more fears that are ...