The loving support of a woman's significant other in the room while she gives birth usually causes her to feel more pain, according to a new study.
A team of researchers gave a group of 39 heterosexual women volunteers a phychology test to determine their level of comfort with intimacy or closeness in romantic relationships. After the test the women were hooked up to a device that shot a laser at one of their fingers causing a "tolerable" amount of pain to be administered. The women, who were all wearing brain scanners, were asked to report the degree of pain they felt both when their romantic partner was present when they were not reported Medical Xpress.
Women who normally prefer less closeness with their significant other felt more pain while they were in the room. The rest of the women reported no difference in pain levels, reported Medical Xpress.
"We were interested in the role of individuals' patterns of seeking or avoiding closeness in their relationships," Dr Charlotte Krahé of the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, told Telegraph. "We wanted to test whether this personality construct, termed attachment style, might determine whether partner support decreases or heightens the experience of pain."
The idea of the father in the delivery room has been a controversial topic for decades. Men first begun entering the delivery room after The Peel report of 1970, which said every woman should have access to hospital care when giving birth, reported Telegraph.
This new study suggests the possibility that women's pain was not a factor in previous studies that looked at the father's role in the delivery room.
The study was published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
