Home Birth Satisfaction (Ireland 2023, Greece 2025)
Trust: 9.9/10 at home vs 5.0/10 in hospital
Trust in provider: 9.9/10 at home vs 5.0/10 in hospital (Ireland). Respect Index: 74.4 (home) vs 56.4 (hospital) out of ~80 (Greece).
Two recent European studies measured how women experience the birth itself, separate from clinical outcomes. The Irish 2023 study asked women to rate their trust in their provider on a 10-point scale. Women who gave birth at home rated trust at 9.9 out of 10.
Women who gave birth in hospital rated it at 5.0. The Greek 2025 study used a standardized Respect Index measuring how women felt they were treated. Home births scored 74.4 on an 80-point scale. Hospital births scored 56.4. These are large effects by any social-science standard. Satisfaction is not a clinical outcome, but it is the outcome women report as mattering most when asked what made their birth a positive or negative experience.
9.9 / 10
Trust at home (Ireland)
5.0 / 10
Trust in hospital (Ireland)
74.4 / 80
Respect Index, home (Greece)
56.4 / 80
Respect Index, hospital (Greece)
Why it matters
Women who give birth at home report trusting their providers about twice as much as women who give birth in hospital. The gap is too large to dismiss as sampling bias.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.