tokophobe

English

Etymology

From toko- +‎ -phobe.

Noun

tokophobe (plural tokophobes)

1. One who has tokophobia.
   • [1986, David Grambs, Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams: Words to Describe Life’s Indescribable People, Workman Publishing, →ISBN, page 124:

     tocophobe (tō´kō fōb´) A woman who dreads childbirth—or her husband who does also, for that matter. Most tocophobes have not yet had a child and are apprehensive about the graduation ceremony from being a unigravida. Some are already mothers but still (with good reason) dread labor pains. A tocophobe, or maieusiophobe, should probably know a good levatrice (midwife).]

   • 2010 March 4, Jessie Hewitson, “'I have a phobia of pregnancy'”, in The Guardian‎^[1], archived from the original on 11 February 2014:

     [Kristina] Hofberg separates sufferers into two categories: primary tokophobes, who fear childbirth before pregnancy, and secondary ones, whose fear is ignited by a traumatic birth. […] Some tokophobes think they will die; others imagine something unbearable happening.

   • 2011 March 19, Ben Wakeling, “Overcoming Tokophobia (Fear Of Pregnancy And Child Birth)”, in HuffPost‎^[2], archived from the original on 9 December 2022:

     Helen Mirren revealed herself to be a tokophobe in 2007, pinpointing the origin of her phobia to a distressing educational film about childbirth shown to her at school when she was a teenager. […] For many, it is the end of pregnancy that holds the most fear, which is why the majority of tokophobes request elective Caesarean sections to help ease their worries.

   • 2015, Sally Pairman, Jan Pincombe, Carol Thorogood, Sally Tracy, “Challenges to Women’s Health”, in Midwifery: Preparation for Practice, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 183:

     [Kristina] Hofberg and [Ian] Brockington (2000) divide sufferers into two categories: primary tocophobes, who fear childbirth before pregnancy, and secondary tocophobes, whose fear is ignited by a traumatic birth.

   • 2016 July 6, Chris Bodenner, “Confessions of a Tokophobe”, in The Atlantic‎^[3], archived from the original on 9 December 2022:

     Confessions of a Tokophobe

   • 2018 February 2, George F. Winter, “Tocophobia”, in British Journal of Midwifery‎^[4], volume 26, number 2, →DOI:

     Describing her reaction to a film on childbirth that was shown at her school, Dame Helen Mirren once commented: ‘I swear it traumatised me to this day. I haven’t had children and now I can’t look at anything to do with childbirth. It absolutely disgusts me’ (Shears, 2007). One might infer that Dame Helen is a tocophobe: someone with a severe fear of childbirth.

   • 2021 November, M. A. O’Connell, C. R. Martin, J. Jomeen, “Reconsidering fear of birth: Language matters”, in Midwifery, volume 102, →DOI:

     ‘[…] a tokophobe, always a tokophobe’.