In the Western world, in Italy in particular, people are becoming mothers later and later.
The average age, in fact, of conception of the first child stands at 31/32 for Italian women, compared with a European average of 29.3.
This fact, determined by a complex intertwining of socio-economic-cultural factors, contributes to the lowering of fertility levels. It is known, in fact, that for women the fertility rate, which is highest between the ages of 20 and 30, undergoes a first decline after age 32 and a more drastic one around age 40.
We are also witnessing a general decrease in fertility, both male and couple fertility.
So more and more “mature” moms and fewer and fewer children.
This contributes to a consideration of pregnancy less and less as a physiological and natural phase of life and more and more as an event characterized by an aura of exceptionality.
Pregnancy by the way, statistics always say, that gives birth to unique children.
The character, therefore, of preciousness and exceptionality that frequently accompanies very suffered pregnancies, because they are awaited, postponed, and difficult to achieve (not to mention the “special” ones achieved through the intervention of medically assisted procreation) causes the fear that something is not going right to take over.
Anxiety and alarm can then color this moment with pathological elements.
From a physiological event, what used to be called an “interesting state” becomes in individual experience a kind of disease state.
This creates rigid modes of behavior (from diet to lifestyle, etc.) that can swing between extremes of medicalization or nature-oriented choices because everything, for an event with such exceptional characteristics, must be perfect, planned and preordained.
In this anxiety to “do the right thing” and “live up to it” , the future new mother often finds herself chasing ideals of behavior and giving up discovering, accepting, and valuing the woman she is, and thus, the mother she will be.
Aspects of fear, ambivalence, and insecurity (which are also present and extremely physiological during pregnancy as in all moments of change) can then be ignored or silenced, while it is precisely with them that one must confront in order to begin to form oneself as a mother, that mother, of that child one will begin to know.
The vision to an ideal (as such rigid and unattainable) is unfortunately frequently at the root of difficulties in adapting to aspects of reality, experienced as effects of guilt or personal inadequacy, leading to possible depressive relapses.
In addition, a view that loads the pregnancy event with “exceptionality” can also make its effects felt on the way of relating to the child, its growth and upbringing.
Undoubtedly, every pregnancy, every birth, every birth, for those who experience them, have characteristics of exceptionality, but of an experiential and personal exceptionality, not a cultural and collective one.
At that level they are and should remain normal life events.
