An Analysis of What to Expect When You're Expecting: From Patronizing Prose to Panicking Premises

I’ve been working on an article about how American cultural products often associate pregnancy with fear.  Toward the end of this piece I analyze the widely acclaimed What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which is often touted as “the pregnancy bible.”  To date, it has sold more than any other contemporary pregnancy self-help manual with over 14.5 million copies in print, it has been a perennial New York Times bestseller, and it has been classified by USA Today as one of the top 25 most influential books of the past 25 years. Because this text is so popular, and because I find it extremely problematic, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts here.

What to Expect is formatted in a way that aligns with its recurrent motif of fear.  Every chapter highlights childbirth concerns as the book weaves its way through the nine months of pregnancy.  According to the article, “What Not to Fear When You Are Expecting,” the text focuses on “invisible killers lurking” beneath the female readers’ ignorance.  The first chapters well showcase the book’s focus on the hidden dangers of pregnancy and are dedicated primarily to the risks that the pregnant woman is confronted with on a daily basis throughout her pregnancy.  From the numerous examples the authors list, it is clear that the book portrays the unborn child as one who is infused with endangerment and the mother to be as one who needs to be aware and responsible.  Ironically, the first chapter of the 4^th edition of the text attempts to mask the book’s emphasis on worst case scenarios.  (This may be in response to some of the criticism the earlier editions of the book received.)  Consider this passage from “Chapter One:  Before You Conceive” of the 4^th edition of What to Expect When You’re Expecting:

So you’ve made the decision to start a family (or to grow that family you’ve

already started).  That’s a great – and exciting – first step.  But before sperm meets egg to create the baby of your dreams, take this preconception opportunity to prepare for the healthiest pregnancy – and baby – possible.  The next steps outlined in this chapter will help you (and dad-to-be) get into tip-top baby-making shape, give you a leg up on conception, and get you to the pregnancy starting gate with all systems go.  If you don’t get pregnant right away relax and keep trying (and don’t forget to keep having fun while you’re trying!).  If you’re already pregnant – and didn’t have a chance to follow these steps before you conceived – not to worry.  Conception often sneaks up on a couple cutting out the preconception period altogether and making those preconception pointers pointless.  If your pregnancy test has already given you the good news, simply start this book at Chapter 2, and make the very best of every day of pregnancy you have ahead of you.  (Murkoff and Mazel 2)

Although the authors begin by deemphasizing the possible risk factors of unsafe behavior during the first few weeks of pregnancy, the rest of the text is devoted to policing women’s behavior throughout each of the three trimesters.  While the content of this opening passage is not overly upsetting, the tone which it takes on is.  It is laced with the overly enthusiastic second person pronouns common to the self-help genre but it also is laden with childish clichés and a conversational tone that undercuts the text’s authoritative status.  Examples of this language use include:  advising parents-to-be to get into “tip-top baby making-shape” and “get a leg up on conception” so they’re at “the pregnancy starting gate” with “all systems go” (Murdoff and Mazel 2).  And, of course there is the reminder that couples should enjoy themselves while trying, which seems like advice that would stem from women’s magazines rather than a supposed medical-esque self-help text.

“Chapter 4:  Your Pregnancy Lifestyle” really begins the heavy doses of fear, listing a range of everyday concerns that pregnant women have.  Although the authors want to make it seem as if they are downplaying some of these issues, it could be argued that the inclusion of each and every one of these issues itself could be considered fear inducing.  Consider this passage:

Of course you’re expecting to make some adjustments in your everyday life now

that you’re expecting (good-bye baby-tees, hello baby-on-board tees).  But you might also be wondering just how drastically your lifestyle will have to change now that you’re living for two.  How about that pre-dinner cocktail – will it have to wait until post-delivery?  Those regular dips in the hot tub the gym – are those washed up, too?  Can you wipe your bathroom sink with that smelly (but effective disinfectant)?  And what’s that you’ve heard about cat litter?  Does being pregnant really mean you have to think twice about all those things you’ve never given a second thought to – from letting your best friend smoke in your living room to zapping your dinner in the microwave?  In a few cases, you’ll find, the answer is an emphatic yes (as in ‘no wine for me, thanks’).  But in many others, your expectant self will be able to continue doing business – and pleasure – as usual, with maybe just a side of caution (‘honey, it’s your turn to change the cat litter – for the next nine months!’).  (Murkoff and Mazel 68)

The marriage of fearful content and adolescent prose is troubling in this text.   The authors talk down to their female readers using infantilizing language that is insulting to the prospective mothers’ intellect.  The overly flowerly descriptions of the conception also seem problematic.  In the excerpt below from chapter one the authors write about how the “sperm meets egg to create the baby of your dreams” (Murkoff and Mazel 2).  In a passage from “Chapter Six:  The First Month,” Murkoff and Mazel go as far as to personify the sperm and egg with truly juvenile phrasing:

Week 2.  Nope, still no baby yet.  But your body isn’t taking a break this week. 

In fact, it’s working hard gearing up for the big O – ovulation.  The lining of your uterus is thickening… and your ovarian follicles are maturing… until one becomes the dominant one, destined for ovulation.  And waiting in that dominant follicle is an anxious egg (or two, if you’re about to conceive fraternal twins) with your baby’s name on it – ready to burst out and begin its journey from single cell to bouncing boy or girl.  But first it will have to make a journey down your fallopian tube in search of Mr. Right – the lucky sperm that will seal the deal.  (121)

In this excerpt the egg is feminized and described as “anxious” and eagerly seeking out her “Mr. Right – the lucky sperm that will seal the deal.”  The patriarchal language is quite obvious as is, again, the overuse of idioms such as “seal the deal.”  The immature description of the woman’s body as “gearing up for the big O – ovulation” appears in text as a cheap, and not altogether humorous, double entendre leading readers’ minds to the sex act, orgasm, rather than the conception process the text purports to be medically explaining.  The romantic asides about destiny and Mr. Right also remove this text from the realm of health studies and launch it back into fairy tale fiction.

I began this research with a slightly cynical attitude, already predisposed to pick apart pregnancy self-help books such as What to Expect When You’re Expecting.  In order to see if I was perhaps projecting my own cultural frustrations onto this much read text, I decided to analyze the customer reviews of this text housed on Amazon.com. My desire to tackle this endeavor was compounded by the fact that out of all the studies directed toward parenting/pregnancy manuals, none specifically analyzed consumer reactions to these texts.

As of October 2010, Amazon.com had 250 reviews of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.  The average rating was 3.6 out of 5 stars, with 56 customers dissatisfied enough to rate it Amazon.com’s lowest rating of one star.  Thirty six reviewers actually alluded to the fearful content within their reviews and often in the title of their post.  Titles ranged from:  “Really Unhelpful and Alarmist”; “Scary!”; “Don’t READ THIS WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING!!!!!!!”; “This Book Will only Serve to Scare You!”; “Read This if You Like Having Meltdowns”; “Scare Tactics”; “What to Expect From this Book? Expect Terror!”; “Want a Terror-Filled Pregnancy/Birth? Read this Book”; “Inaccurate, Misleading, and Full of Fearful Messages”; “Scary for 1st time Moms”; “What to Fear When You're Expecting!!”; “Expectant Mothers - Stay Away!”; “What PROBLEMS to Expect When You're Expecting”; “Great Book for Hypochondriacs, All Others STAY AWAY!”; “Alarmist”; “Condescending and Horrible”; “Designed to Scare You”; “DO NOT READ THIS BOOK ALONE”; “How to be Constantly Scared while You're Expecting”; “Fear Mongering at its Worst”; “Everything to Fear That Probably Won't Happen When You're Expecting”; “Are You a Paranoid Freak who Hates her Body? Then this Book is for You”; and “May Cause Mothers to Worry Excessively.”

The critique of the text, quite obviously, did not end with the review titles alone.  One poster stated: “This book represents to me the worst in our alarmist culture [concerning] medicalized pregnancy and birth.”  Another remarked:  “This is the WORST book to read if you are pregnant. It feeds into the fear culture that unfortunately surrounds birth today.”  Some of the longer posts – housed on the following table – go into more detailed critiques.  Interestingly, the most critical comes from that not of a pregnant woman – the book’s target demographic – but from that of a husband of a pregnant woman.  Altogether, the array of passionately negative reviews suggest that scholars are not wrong to critique these self-help books.  However, it would be misleading to not note that, despite these very strong posts that criticize What to Expect When You are Expecting, the vast majority of the ratings and posts were more neutral or positive, accounting for its overall rating of 3.6.  This fact in itself is telling.  That so many readers do not react negatively to fear-invoking, patronizing prose indicates that this has become somewhat of the norm for “pregnancy bibles” such as this one.  It also suggests that the readers consuming these texts are not doing so with a critical eye, which itself could be viewed as problematic. 

Customer Reviews for What to Expect When You’re Expecting from Amazon.com

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Consumer Rating (out of 5 Stars): 1.0		Date of Review: 3/21/2009	Title of Post: “So Condescending!”
Review:  This book assumes that pregnant women are idiots, and talks to them accordingly. It's full of cutsey [sic] language, puns, and linguistic tics that drove this English major up a wall. In terms of content, it contributes to our culture's position of "better safe than sorry" when it comes to kids - kids and pregnant women must be protected from anything and everything that might be the slightest bit upsetting. It does not provide any information on the research behind their advice, assuming that the pregnant woman is too stupid or lacking in self-control to make an informed decision for herself upon being presented with the facts, relying instead on making across the board recommendations on all kinds of things for which there is no scientific basis. I also hated that the miscarriage section had a big disclaimer warning pregnant women not to read it unless they actually had had a miscarriage, because the knowledge alone that miscarriage could happen would be so emotionally devastating to her that she couldn't handle it. After doing some research on my own and finding out how inaccurate and unnecessary many of their claims are, I find I no longer trust the book at all. I would not recommend it.
Consumer Rating (out of 5 Stars): 1.0	Date of Review: 11/07/2008		Title of Post: “Read This if You Like Having Meltdowns”
Review:  To make a long story short, after getting about 120 pages into this book, I called my best friend nearly in tears. I told her I was reading the book, and before I could go into details, she said "oh for goodness sakes, don't read THAT! It's all about what you can't do and what can go wrong." Turns out that three other friends of mine echoed the same sentiments with no prompting. This book is a great way to make a (probably already nauseous) pregnant woman even more miserable.
Consumer Rating (out of 5 Stars): 1.0	Date of Review: 11/13/2008		Title of Post:  “Revised Title:  What PROBLEMS to Expect When You’re Expecting”
Review:  After reading this book, I am amazed there are any successful, healthy pregnancies at all. This book has kept me on edge for the entire duration of the pregnancies with its monthly list of complications. I would have definitely been happier with a book that outlined all of the things that you personally can do to ensure a healthy pregnancy, and focus less on possible complications which are beyond your control!!!
Consumer Rating (out of 5 Stars): 1.0	Date of Review: 05/31/2008		Title of Post: “To All Expecting Fathers…”
Review:   Guys ... consider this a warning; this will be the worst book that your significant other can read and will make your life utterly miserable for the next nine months. It's been over four years since I had to deal with this series’ 3rd edition and I still can't stand the sight of it.  It may have been intended as a self-help guide, but its alarmist tone and condescending attitude leads this to act more as a bible for every worst-case scenario imaginable. After spending a few hours perusing this book's contents, your wife, girlfriend, whomever [sic] will become so overworked and paranoid that every little ache, pain, and irritation will become a sign of the baby being born with a forked tongue and three heads. The diet your partner will be instructed to keep is impossible for any human being alive to follow. She will be told to try and avoid ... damn near everything it seems like.  I was also incensed that after reading up on the author, all of this "wonderful" information was being brought to me by someone with NO MEDICAL BACKGROUND. If I'm going to want advice on dealing with pregnancy issues, wouldn't I want to consult an expert (i.e. someone with a degree)? Murkoff is no more an expert then I am ...   I'll be blunt, WTEWYE seems to be an EXTREMELY popular gift for someone who's pregnant for the first time and it's probably unavoidable. I came into three copies without any effort at all. I'm not going to stand here and pretend I know of a better source for information either, because (outside of ... oh I don't know ... a doctor) I don't. All I know is that if THIS is the definitive volume on the pregnancy experience, then God help us all.    I absolutely guarantee you, someone your partner knows WILL buy this for her. Your mission is to "lose it." If you're already stuck with it and you can't hide it or burn it, at least do your best to temper its pages with as much perspective as you possibly can…. Batten down the hatches and break out the antacid my friends, it's gonna be a long nine months.
Consumer Rating (out of 5 Stars): 1.0	Date of Review: 12/20/2008			Title of Post: “UGH!!! This is a Book to Avoid”
Review:  This is the WORST pregnancy book I have read during my 3 pregnancies. I am not generally an anxious person, but this book gives you lots to be anxious about. If you want to know every single thing that could go wrong during a pregnancy (regardless of how rare it is) then you might like this book. I have also found the other books in this series to be of a similar tone and in some cases to contain inaccurate information.
Consumer Rating (out of 5 Stars): 2.0	Date of Review: 2/13/2009			Title of Post: “DO NOT READ THIS BOOK ALONE”
Review:  This book scared the crap out of me! I have always heard that it was a pregnant woman's "bible", so when I found out I was expecting it was the first book I bought. After the first night of reading it I was a mess. I felt like no matter what I did was wrong and that I was going to end up doing permanent damage to my child. I was so afraid of eating the wrong thing, drinking too much sugar, moving the wrong way that I stopped eating and sleeping. Finally, my husband hid the book and told me to trust my body and my instincts. Amazingly, he was right.

In this article, and others, I am often drawn to Susan Faludi’s argument in her book, Backlash, that the 1980s can be viewed as a time of backlash directed toward feminists for the successes of the women’s movement.  Although two decades have passed since Faludi’s initial theorization, I find myself arguing that the cultural climate remains eerily the same.   I would argue that the period of backlash never quite ended.  In fact, it instead seems to have morphed stealthily from direct media tirades to more subtle consumer packaging – making the latter seem all the more frightening.  The dominance of a text like What to Expect When You Are Expecting seems to indicate that the backlash is still alive and working on women across the country in very covert, and problematic, ways.  As Faludi’s original study well proved, the power of misinformation coupled with fear can be quite detrimental.  Given that this same coalition exists on the personal bookshelves of women across the country, it seems important that feminist scholars continue to critique this impregnated genre of parenting advice books with an eye toward their possible long term implications.