Mum knows best when you’re pregnant

Pregnant women may dismiss professional advice in favour of practices recommended by their mothers and grandmothers, researchers warned yesterday.

Modern women take medical advice more seriously than previous generations when they become pregnant, according to a new study.

But they are still likely to listen to their mothers rather than their doctors, according to the study by psychologists at Royal Holloway College, London, UK.

One woman was told by her grandmother that drinking tea would reduce morning sickness – so she carried on drinking even when her doctor advised her to cut down on caffeine.

Researchers questioned women who gave birth in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s. They found that in the 1970s, female relatives were the main source of information but a decade later women were balancing this advice with tips from doctors, health visitors and magazines.

Researcher Professor Paula Nicolson said: "Each of the three generations found ways to resist what they considered inappropriate pressures from advisers and were more likely to follow advice given to them from their mothers and grandmothers even if it went against the medical profession’s advice.

"Women tend to discuss the advice they are given with their female relatives and this leads to resistance to some types of advice."

She added: "It is much to the credit of contemporary women that despite the unprecedented pressures from the media, medicine and the ‘pregnancy police’ that they are still able to filter-in the advice that really suits them from all these sources."

Constructions of Pregnant and Postnatal Embodiment across Three Generations Mothers’, Daughters’ and Others’ Experiences of the Transition to Motherhood; Paula Nicolson, Rebekah Fox, Kristin Heffernan published in The Journal of Health Psychology Vol. 15, No. 4, 575-585 (2010) DOI: 10.1177/1359105309355341