It goes without saying that giving birth is the most essential trait of any species, so I’m confused as to why it’s such a painful process for not just humans but also many other species. I’d venture to assume that the reason as to why sex feels so good is because, if it didn’t feel good, we wouldn’t want to do it, and if we’d feel discouraged to have sex, our species would trend towards doom. So, why is it that giving birth is such a painful process if it’s inextricably tied to the instinct of proliferating our species and keeping it alive?
In: Biology
A couple of things here. Giving birth hurts because it’s a physically traumatic process and there’s really no way around that. For mammals to survive outside the womb, they need to be developed enough to nurse, move, etc, which means they need to be pretty big. That said, it doesn’t seem like it’s *as* painful for other mammals as it is for humans, because of how we’ve evolved (large heads, upright posture which limits the size of the pelvis and birth canal, etc.) This is one of the reasons by the way that human infants are so helpless for so long while calves, foals, etc can walk or run within a day of birth: our babies have to be small enough to even make birth survivable, and the compromise is that they come out basically not quite fully developed.
The other thing is, evolution doesn’t care how comfortable something is. Species survive and change just based on if enough individuals survive to reproduce. So if the pain isn’t so bad that it actually affects our ability to survive, it won’t get changed except by coincidence.
Latest Answers