The everchanging social, political, and economic landscape in many countries has become more tenuous and intense in recent years. Respondents in a indicated a prevailing mood of uncertainty, with 50 percent of them anticipating a turbulent or stormy outlook on life over the next two years. This negative perception swells to 57 percent of respondents when looking ahead to the next 10 years.
Social structures, government policies, and cultural norms shape how people think, live, and interact. If those factors are in constant flux, the repercussions can have adverse effects. More worrisome, however, is how external stressors affect pregnant women, who are already experiencing significant physiological changes in preparation for the birth of a baby and, subsequently, adjusting to life with a newborn.
If there are additional factors in a motherâs own lifeâsuch as violent, turbulent, or uncertain social or political circumstancesâthen her fear and anxiety will likely increase, potentially putting her and her unborn childâs health at risk. The impacts of these sociopolitical stressors could lead to preterm birth, among other complications, not to mention the psychological and physiological effects.
âYet, we know very little about how mothers cope with these stressors,â said , assistant professor in the at the University of Notre Dame. Chua researches reproductive biology, maternal health, and health inequities, particularly within Filipino communities and communities of color.
This gap motivated Chua and her fellow researchers to ask the question: How do expectant mothers manage these uncertainties and cope with sociopolitical stressors? The answer became the focus of their , of which Chua was the lead author.
Interviewing 21 pregnant Filipina women across multiple regions of the Philippines in 2021, Chua and her team sought to understand how these women internalized such stressors. They found that they used creative coping strategies, some of which are grounded in Filipino cultural practices and shaped how they navigated such uncertainties. Some reframed difficult circumstances and maintained a positive outlook, while others deliberately disengaged from political stressors and focused instead on the well-being of their families.
What causes stress and where does it come from?
According to Chua and her co-authors, previous research had been limited in that it did not address how pregnant individuals perceive and embody outside stressors and the implications for health. Nor did it address the various coping strategies they found useful in dealing with stress in order to protect their bodies and pregnancies.
The research team specifically chose to study pregnant women in the Philippines, a country marked by intense state violence, high poverty rates, political corruption, and a highly publicized war on drugs, as well as some of the worldâs strictest COVID pandemic lockdown restrictions during the research period.
Their interviews with the pregnant women revealed how interconnected social, political, and economic stressors can beâwith 67 percent of study participants citing financial stress, 38 percent indicating access to quality medical care, and 52 percent saying cultural pressures affected their emotional, physical, and mental well-being.
One of the societal challenges compounding this predicament for citizens of the Philippines is their outsized reliance on social media for gathering news and informationâan open portal that has the potential to continuously feed them negative or politicized discourse. According to Chua and her co-authors, 62 percent of their study participants cited Facebook or other social media sites as their primary source of information, adding that the ânews they ingested had a profound impact on their perceived stress levels.â
What are some ways new moms cope?
The interviewees revealed that not all of the negative news they consumed necessarily affected them adversely. Many described relying on creative coping strategies pulled from within their Filipino identity and upbringing.
For example, noted the researchers, many expectant mothers found ways to reframe those stressors. One way to accomplish that is through the concept of âcommunity viewingââcomparing oneself to others to determine who might be âdoing better.â The realization that others within their circle might actually be relatively worse off (experiencing death, food scarcity, and extreme poverty, for example) allowed them to manage the difficulties of their own situations.
Second, maintaining a positive outlook on life and being able to âlaugh things offâ gave them a new perspective and renewed state of mind that enabled them to âbuild resiliency against adversity.â
Another reframing technique many expectant moms found useful was looking toward their relationships with family members and appreciating the positive aspects of their lives. Said one study participant: âWe cope by remembering the blessings we have [now] and that are yet to come.â
Chua said that participants also found ways to exercise their own agency, which could manifest in one of three cultural practices. One is disengaging and remaining indifferent or resistant to the news of the dayâletting the negative news âgo in one ear and out the other,â as one participant described.
A second method is to invoke the mentality of bahala naâa phrase that translates to âwhatever happens, happensâ and is driven by a belief that God will provide. In other words, they believe that regardless of how difficult things are or how far out of their control the situation may become, these new moms and their families will somehow prevail.
Finally, respondents found outright avoidance to be a surefire way to leave some of those stressors behind and move forward with daily living. Deliberately staying silentâas opposed to engaging in political debates or trying to change othersâ political opinionsâallowed them to protect themselves against unpleasant, negative, and stressful experiences during pregnancy, the co-authors wrote. Rather, they focused âon concerns within their immediate control,â such as the current safety and health of their children and the general well-being of their families.
Chua emphasized that âthe intent of the work is not to romanticize what might be viewed as a passive outlook or response, but to investigate the strategies these women have at their disposal to cope and deal with challenging circumstances. Doing so is harmful to the participants and to the field of study.â
âMaternal and fetal health is influenced not only by medical care but also by the broader social and political environment. And politics definitely plays a significant role in shaping perinatal health.â
What can these findings mean for other mothers?
While these specific coping strategies were utilized by the pregnant Filipina women included in Chuaâs study, their insights may extend to any expectant mother living with social, political, and financial stressors.
âMaternal and fetal health is influenced not only by medical care but also by the broader social and political environment,â Chua said. âAnd politics definitely plays a significant role in shaping perinatal health.â
Chua said the research highlighted how further work is needed to fully understand this interaction, as well as how these coping strategies affect stress biology during pregnancy and its impact on newborn health. âFuture study also needs to take into account how helpful or harmful these coping strategies may be,â she added.
âOur study is one of the first to examine how Filipina women embody politics during pregnancy,â the co-authors wrote. âWe expect these findings to contribute to the advancement of womenâs health on a local and global level by demonstrating the complexities associated with stress embodiment, management, and its impact on fetal development.â
Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu