What motivates women to conceal pregnancies?
The ‘Keeping it Secret’ study is being undertaken by Sylvia Murphy-Tighe, an experienced midwife and lecturer at University of Limerick from Co Clare, with the backing of the Health Research Board and Trinity College Dublin.
Her posters seeking contact from women who are concealing pregnancies, or have done so in the recent past, will soon be appearing in Student Union offices and healthcare and welfare settings.
“We are looking at concealed pregnancy in contemporary Ireland because it hasn’t gone away,” says Ms Murphy-Tighe.
“Unfortunately, we can’t say how prevalent it is because we don’t have sufficient statistics, and even internationally, data collection is quite patchy.”
A 2006 study of two Irish hospitals, one rural and one urban — unnamed to protect the women involved — found the prevalence of concealed pregnancies to be one in every 403 births in the rural hospital and one in every 625 in the city.
However, a 2012 study from University Hospital Galway found a much greater incidence — classifying one in every 148 births there as concealed.
Based on current birth rates here, that would mean anything from just over 100 to as many as 470 concealed births per year.
Such variations in results would suggest different definitions of concealment are in use, but in fact both researchers used 20 weeks — half-way through a normal pregnancy — to benchmark the point past which an expectant mother who has not yet revealed her condition to anyone is considered to have concealed it.
The variations then may be due to how different healthcare staff assess and record concealment, something Ms Murphy-Tighe is hoping her study might help standardise across all healthcare providers.
“Internationally, there is lot of confusion about what is concealed pregnancy and what is denied pregnancy, because there are women who absolutely and totally and utterly deny it and to me, that’s a different issue,” she says.
“For me, concealment involves women who are absolutely sane and rational and this is a coping mechanism for them. They are consciously concealing and hiding the fact that they are pregnant for very valid reasons.”
Ms Murphy-Tighe expects to find those reasons range from the personal and financial to practical and cultural, in any number of forms and combinations.
“Historically, it might have been mainly because of religious or cultural reasons, because it might have been unacceptable to be pregnant outside of marriage.
“That is still a factor for women around the world today. We know from some services here that they also come across women from countries where Catholicism would be very strong — from the Philippines or Poland for example — who are hiding the fact that they are pregnant.
“But something that is coming up more is power and dynamics in relationships. I have spoken to the Garda Domestic Violence Unit and they will tell you that they occasionally come across a woman who has concealed her pregnancy because of a violent partner.
“There are also cases where she is not allowed to take contraception and he won’t use condoms and she isn’t allowed access doctors. Pregnancy is used as a tool to keep control over her.
“In other cases, there might be no boyfriend or partner and it might be parents who exert the control. A woman might be fearful of sanction, fearful of being thrown out of home or losing their relationships with their family.”
Considering the economic climate, there are often financial motivations, says Ms Murphy-Tighe.
“Women who are in temporary employment may fear not being made permanent if it’s known they’re pregnant. Others may be fearful of losing out on a promotion,” she says.
Ironically, given that Ann Lovett’s name is one of the first that comes to mind when the subject of concealed pregnancies comes up, underage mothers rarely conceal.
“The profile of women who conceal tends to be the 18-26 age group, although it’s important to say that it can be women of all ages and in all kinds of relationships,” says Ms Murphy-Tighe.
Frontline staff have been key to Ms Murphy-Tighe’s research. As a midwife, she has come across cases of women sometimes described as “late bookers” who only seek care at an advanced stage of pregnancy, who arrive in hospital for the first time already in labour or only after giving birth at home — sometimes with tragic consequences.
“I speak to social workers and crisis pregnancy counsellors and they come across concealment,” she says.
“In the past, some women would have used what were called mother and baby homes so they would conceal their pregnancy up to the point where they could leave home.
“Now we have women who will leave the jurisdiction and pretend to be working or living in the UK or travelling abroad so they can go through their pregnancy, not entirely in secret, but secret from people at home.
“I have spoken to a clinical psychologist who does assessments for adoption and he had come across students who have given their babies up for adoption without family ever knowing they were pregnant.”
Without the insight of health professionals, and the firsthand experiences of women themselves, the only cases that would come to light are the most tragic ones that end up in inquests.
One example that opened in the coroner’s court in the last few weeks involved a baby found dead in a toilet by gardaí called to a house in Cork after a woman gave birth in her own bathroom in circumstances yet to be fully clarified.
“It’s a very complex issue and until we speak to women and get a better handle on what exactly is happening in their own lives and in their own minds, we can’t really get to grips with it,” says Ms Murphy-Tighe.
“It has an impact on two lives — a mother and a baby — and it has a societal impact as well.”
* Any expectant mother who is concealing her pregnancy or any woman who has done so is invited to contact Ms Murphy-Tighe in confidentiality by email to smurphyt@tcd.ie or by calling or texting 087 9817 340.
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