Dark Days in the Doula World

At a time when women’s rights are being eroded…

I know many of you may not be actively aware of what’s happening in the doula world right now. It’s one of those professions where, unless you’re in it, a lot of the bigger tensions and power struggles play out behind the scenes. But these past few weeks have been particularly heavy, and I feel it’s important to share what’s been unfolding – because it doesn’t just affect doulas. It affects the women and families we walk alongside, and it speaks to something much bigger about how women’s rights are held (or eroded) in birth.

The NMC Webinar

A couple of weeks ago, Doula UK teamed up with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to host a webinar. On paper, this should have been a space for collaboration – doulas and midwives coming together to talk about how we can better support families. In reality, it felt like something else entirely: a thinly veiled opportunity to remind doulas of our “place.”

At one point, it was stated that the role of a doula is to “psychologically reinforce what a midwife is saying.”

I don’t say this lightly, but those words are chilling. They matter because Doula UK often positions itself as the representative voice of all doulas – which it is not – and by validating a statement like that, they risk reshaping the very heart of what doulas stand for. We are not psychological reinforcers. We are not cheerleaders for compliance. Our role is, and has always been, to protect space for autonomy, to remind women of their rights, to ensure that their voice is louder than the system’s.

To suggest otherwise is more than a misunderstanding – it’s dangerous. It confuses our role with clinical authority (something doulas neither claim nor want), and it subtly positions us as another cog in the machine that tells women to “be good, be quiet, do as you’re told.”

Yes, Doula UK have since issued a clarification – words about collaboration, advocacy, evidence-based support – but for me it read more like damage control than genuine correction. Once something like that has been said, you can’t unhear it.

A woman’s psychological safety is incredibly important, and it is wrong to suggest that it is right or appropriate for a doula to try an manipulate that to encourage a woman to be compliant and do as she is told.

‘Reporting’ Doulas…

As if that weren’t enough, another situation has been bubbling under the surface. Two midwives, employed under Private Midwives and now with Zest, reported a doula for supposedly “impersonating a midwife” at a birth they didn’t make it to in time. Both the doula and the client have been crystal clear that this did not happen. And honestly, what does “impersonating a midwife” even mean? Attending a birth before arrival? Being present, calm, reassuring, while the baby is born? That is not clinical care. That is humanity.

The most important voice in all of this – the mother’s – is firmly in support of her doula. But history tells us that women’s accounts are rarely the ones taken most seriously when systems feel threatened. And that, more than anything, is what sits like a stone in my stomach.

Both of these incidents are concerning in their own right. But together, they form part of a bigger story: the growing conversation about regulating doulas.

Now, on the surface, regulation might sound neat and tidy. Who wouldn’t want professional standards, accountability, clear lines? But let’s be real. The NHS is one of the most regulated systems there is, and still we see mistreatment, trauma, and systemic failures every single day. Regulation does not guarantee care. More often, it guarantees fear. And fear leads to practice rooted in policy over people, tick-boxes over nuance, rules over rights.

So what would regulating doulas even mean? We don’t provide clinical care. Would they limit the types of births we’re “allowed” to attend? Dictate how we can emotionally support? Police the words we say to someone in labour? It’s ludicrous. And, I believe, deeply sinister – another attempt to control women’s experiences by controlling those who stand with them.

For me, regulation already exists. It lives in my values. It’s woven into the ethics I share with families from the very first conversation. It’s in my agreements, my boundaries, my practice. I hold myself accountable to the women I serve – not to a panel, not to a tick-box. That’s the only framework I need to stay rooted in what matters.

The wrong use of energy

And perhaps that’s the most frustrating part of all this. Instead of directing energy toward repairing systemic harm, too many people seem intent on stoking old turf wars – doulas versus midwives, who holds more power, who gets to decide what role belongs to who. It’s a distraction. It keeps us fighting sideways when what we should be doing is looking up.

Because the bigger picture is stark. Women’s rights are being chipped away. Trauma is being normalised. And somewhere along the way, we’ve swallowed the lie that other people have more authority over a woman’s body than she does herself.

That is the real crisis. Not whether doulas need regulating. Not whether we’re reinforcing midwives strongly enough. But whether women still get to be the centre of their own birth stories.

That’s the work I’ll keep doing. That’s the ground I’ll keep standing on, even in these heavy times.