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I wonder if there's anything here to the puritan notion that virtue requires pain. It's cliche that men bond particularly tightly in the blood and fear of war.

I wonder if there's anything here to the puritan notion that virtue requires pain. It's cliche that men bond particularly tightly in the blood and fear of war. Does that apply to birth? Is the maternal bond strengthened by birth trauma? Or it could be that a painful birth weakens the bond with resentment.

renewiltord 5y ago
My aunt was, decades ago, an obstetrician in the UAE where, in a certain community, there was a belief that painful childbirth formed a strong bond between mother and child. In practice, that meant there was a lot more screaming in the operating room there than in Leicester. As far as she could tell, the children weren't any more loved.
- igetspam 5y ago
  Wow... that's terrible. If being in pain during childbirth was a way to create a stronger bond AND we actually believed it, we'd jab fathers with hot pokers while the mother was in labor. Pain would be a shared experience and we'd all bond. But that's not what would actually happen. We'd have a lot less childbirth if men had to endure physical pain during the hours of labor. It's more likely that they just wanted women to suffer for some fictional sin they found in one of their fantasy novels about gods. There's no way I'd have participated in the suffering of childbirth. Women who do it are tough and I just don't have it in me to suffer like that for a kid. Perhaps I'm unique in that but I doubt it.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    For what it's worth, the screaming did not correlate with amount of anaesthetic administered. As a doctor, her role was definitely to ensure safety of mother and child and appropriate care for the mother, which she fulfilled. Absence of screaming was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of pain, however. And lack of pain was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of bond. And lack of bond so observed by family would be shameful for the mother. Fortunately, few women in this culture ever failed to form a bond with their children through this mechanism, so little shame was experienced. One can only conclude that our conventional mechanisms of analgesia do not function for people in this culture for some reason.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Shared adversity builds strong bonds but that kind of goes out the window if one party can't remember it and the adversity is therefore not shared. It's probably closer to sunk cost fallacy at that point.
civilized 5y ago
My wife says she forgot it anyway. Because if you remembered you'd never have one again.

renewiltord 5y ago

My aunt was, decades ago, an obstetrician in the UAE where, in a certain community, there was a belief that painful childbirth formed a strong bond between mother and child. In practice, that meant there was a lot more screaming in the operating room there than in Leicester. As far as she could tell, the children weren't any more loved.

igetspam 5y ago
Wow... that's terrible. If being in pain during childbirth was a way to create a stronger bond AND we actually believed it, we'd jab fathers with hot pokers while the mother was in labor. Pain would be a shared experience and we'd all bond. But that's not what would actually happen. We'd have a lot less childbirth if men had to endure physical pain during the hours of labor. It's more likely that they just wanted women to suffer for some fictional sin they found in one of their fantasy novels about gods. There's no way I'd have participated in the suffering of childbirth. Women who do it are tough and I just don't have it in me to suffer like that for a kid. Perhaps I'm unique in that but I doubt it.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  For what it's worth, the screaming did not correlate with amount of anaesthetic administered. As a doctor, her role was definitely to ensure safety of mother and child and appropriate care for the mother, which she fulfilled. Absence of screaming was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of pain, however. And lack of pain was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of bond. And lack of bond so observed by family would be shameful for the mother. Fortunately, few women in this culture ever failed to form a bond with their children through this mechanism, so little shame was experienced. One can only conclude that our conventional mechanisms of analgesia do not function for people in this culture for some reason.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Shared adversity builds strong bonds but that kind of goes out the window if one party can't remember it and the adversity is therefore not shared. It's probably closer to sunk cost fallacy at that point.

civilized 5y ago

My wife says she forgot it anyway. Because if you remembered you'd never have one again.