To view the Abstract of A Higher Calling, Click Here
Overview:
- Study title: “A Higher Calling: The Right Brain Approach to Understanding Why Women Want to Become Pregnant and Why Those Who Don’t, Don’t”
- October 2006
- 92 interviews with women/mothers conducted in Memphis, Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles
- Keywords: (1) Motherhood, (2) The Life Plan or Dream, (3) Higher Calling/New Me (4) Influencer support/Be the One, (5) www.youroptions.com
Study:
Background
Consumer Objectives
- Uncover the psychological dynamics that drive women’s decisions about pregnancy when deciding they want to have children and when faced with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.
- Uncover the psychological dynamics that influence how women react emotionally and determine what they say when other women seek their comfort and advice when these other women are faced with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.
- Uncover and understand the right brain equivalent of perceiving abortion as unthinkable.
- Identify the emotional opposite of abortion.
- Discover the most powerful messages for convincing women to deliver their babies.
Marketing Objectives
- Encourage women to feel and to believe that abortion is “unthinkable.”
- Develop a strategy to market the emotional opposite of abortion.
Findings
When respondents talk about Plans they are actually talking about an emotional blueprint that is, in many cases, interchangeable with the word “Dream.” To respondents they are the same thing. They use plan and dream to refer to the same psychological phenomenon. Therefore, we will use the word Plan to stand in for both Plan and Dream in the remainder of the summary.
The Plan gives respondents structure in their lives and therefore hope that they can have the lives they envision. As long as they have their Plan, they feel they have some control over their lives.
Their Plans may change over time as they face various circumstances and challenges in their lives, however, most will not change radically.
The news of every pregnancy is “filtered” through the Plan. The pregnancy will change their lives and may even change their Plans. If a pregnancy is seen and felt to take the Plan too far off course, the pregnancy will take second place to the Plan, and an abortion is likely.
The decision to carry a baby to term is part of a psychological equation in the mind. Here is how it works in the woman’s mind:
- The likelihood of carrying to term equals Self-Identity plus the combination of the Support that those around the pregnant woman offer her and the Reassurance she feels that she can accept the new identity she will take on through the changed Plan.
Choice is not really the right word because many respondents who “choose” abortion say they do not feel like they really have any real choices.
They say they are torn between two unacceptable options. This dynamic is very similar to the emotions felt by raped women who feel the guilt of powerlessness by being raped. Although respondents who had abortions chose to abort, they feel and say that they did the best they could with no cards and no luck. The result of feeling like they were forced into abortion is that they feel bereft of power over their lives and their bodies. To hold onto any sense of the adults they want to be, these respondents compartmentalize their experiences and feelings about having had abortions.
Compartmentalization is a defense against the pain, hurt, depression and anxiety caused by the abortion. Even though they feel they were forced into it, they still feel guilty.
For some respondents who have a knowledge, understanding, belief in, relationship with God, this can be a reason/way to help them decide to parent rather than abort their child.
Many respondents also say that motherhood is a Calling from God. Here is how the feeling of being Called works for these respondents:
- They were going along their way in life with no strong direction
- They got pregnant.
- The unexpected baby is a gift and responsibility from God.
- They realize they can be a Mother.
Being a Mother means they have power over someone else AND they have a reason for being a better person. In effect, they feel God is Calling them to live a better life, including taking responsibility for another life.
They feel like they move from being relatively useless to become someone who molds another person for the future.
At a physical level, becoming pregnant is a very obvious and definite sign of adulthood and womanhood. Therefore, becoming pregnant is one simple way of moving from the relatively powerless role of teenager to adult mother.
Messaging: Reassurance
Reassure women that they can rewrite their Plans to include motherhood at an unplanned time
- Mother is A Higher Calling and Plan
- Other Plans/Dreams can still be achieved
- Women can do it and can find emotional support
- Other women have faced unplanned/unwanted pregnancies and gone on to better lives
- Mother can make you a better person
Most of the dynamics, emotional needs and emotional barriers presented in this study are presented as having the capability of making it more likely a woman will choose abortion and in another, opposite way, making it more likely a woman will choose to become a mother. These dynamics, then, are less helpful to Vitae in developing programming or emotionally based messaging.
Because that message directly supports women who may become pregnant and who are struggling with changing their Plans to include the unplanned pregnancies. In effect, Acceptance is encouraging these women’s potential supporters (families, friends, husbands, boyfriends, etc.) to accept A Higher Calling and in so doing encourage her to accept it as well. The Reassurance is for all women to reassure a pregnant woman that she can take A Higher Calling and change her Plan to embrace the pregnancy and the New Me of motherhood.
This finding ties in well with Vitae’s “Be the One” campaign of encouraging “influencers” to support women they know who are dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. It is a powerful fact from quantitative research studies that 82% of women would have chosen life if just one person would have encouraged them.