II. Interventions & C-Sections
Listening to Mothers III: Epidural Pressure
73% epidural rate. 1 in 7 women felt pressured to accept it.
73% of US hospital births use epidural/spinal anesthesia. 15% of women felt pressured by a healthcare professional to accept an epidural.
Listening to Mothers III was a 2013 survey of 2,400 mothers who gave birth in US hospitals. It found that 73 percent received epidural or spinal anesthesia for labor pain. Among those who used an epidural, 15 percent reported that they felt pressured by a healthcare professional to accept it.
Pressure was not defined uniformly across respondents, but the qualitative follow-up captured women describing being told they would slow down labor, hurt the baby, or be left without options if they refused. The survey is the largest national look at reported maternal experience of pain management, and it remains the best available evidence on consent dynamics in epidural decisions. The numbers have not been updated by a comparable national survey since, which makes the 2013 baseline the working figure.
73%
US hospital epidural rate
15%
Felt pressured to accept
2,400
Mothers surveyed
1 in 7
Pressured into the epidural
Why it matters
An intervention given to nearly three in four women involves reported pressure for one in seven of them. Consent under those conditions is not the same as freely chosen consent.
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.