Chapter 17: Childbirth and Pain in the Context of Brazilian Women in Different Socioeconomic Conditions¹

Pain, like any other human experience, is a psychological phenomenon that is constituted in the culture and encompasses a scale of meanings that are shared socially. In that sense, although it is experienced in a subjective manner, particularized and hardly measurable, the attitudes and manners of dealing with that pain are circumscribed by the collective frames: education models, health systems, availability and application of modern technologies, traditional practices, and beliefs, among others.

In the narratives of Brazilian mothers about their experiences of childbirth, pain is a remarkable and recurring topic, always involved in multiple dimensions, be it the subjective sphere or that which refers to the sociocultural environment to which those women are linked. To understand childbirth pain as a constructed and experienced social reality implies in considering the ways in which cultural models are present in the personal experience, through constraints that normalize and regulate the manners of feeling and acting when facing pain.