My wife just had a baby. Childbirth was painful.In terms of darwinian theories what purpose does it serve?

Answer 1

Pain at childbirth doesn't serve an evolutionary function. Contrary to what's been stated above, there are women who experience little pain or no pain during childbirth. However, because the pain of childbirth usually does not restrict survival in any way, it cannot be selected against. Those who do not feel pain are not given any significant survival advantage over those who do, so the experience of pain is not a selective factor. Most other mammals do not experience as much pain during childbirth as humans, due to smaller cranial sizes and other morphological differences, but the pain has not been a preventative factor in giving birth as the sheer numbers of our species is a testament to.

Answer 2

In a way, you are asking the question backwards. What purpose would it serve to remove the pain?

Although it definitely isn't pleasant, women don't die from the pain. So it is not a very strong selective pressure. On the other hand, the reason why the pain happens is a very strong positive selective pressure. That is, the pain comes because the baby is maxed out in size, especially the size of the head. If the mother had a poor diet during pregnancy, then the kid would be smaller, right? And the mom would hardly have any pain. But the kid would have a much lower chance of survival. So, in a way, the pain is the price that the mom pays for producing a kid who has a better chance of survival.

Of course, among women living in a state of nature, say, as hunter gatherer women living on the savannah, the women walk quite a lot (10 -15 miles a day), and they have fairly sparse diets, so they are in great shape and the babies are small - so those women have much less difficulty in childbirth than overfed modern moms who probably are not in as good shape.

Answer 3

Darwins theories suggest the idea of "survival of the fittest" There is no record to suggest that pain in childbirth was something that evolved. What I mean by this is that it isn't a trait that can be selected against because there aren't individuals that do not have pain in childbirth. Usually with Darwins evolution theories there are groups that show different characteristics. There was no such "no pain in childbirth" group to be selected for. Simply put, pain is a result of the fact that the baby is bigger than the opening that it is expected to be pushed through. To produce heighted sensations in sex there are a lot of nerve endings in the wall of the vagina and so this means that there is the potential for pain also.

Answer 4

Childbirth is just as painful for the child as it is for the mother...imagine being squeezed through a hole about the size of an orange. In terms of Darwinian theory, childbirth represents a child's instinctual drive to live...the birthing canal is the first obstacle in a child's life...they must be physically fit to endure the passage, and grow up & have the right to pro-create.

Answer 5

What purpose is served by pain resulting from the overstressing of bodily tissues? It allows us to know when and where we have been injured, so that we will not continue to overtax the same areas, causing further trauma. Pain isn't unique to childbirth you know. It is an important aspect of the body's ability to protect and repair itself. If there were no such thing as pain when tissues are overstressed, people wouldn't seek medical care when they had a heart attack or appendicitis or a blood clot in their leg, and they would simply die from such causes. That's a pretty useful purpose, I'd say.

Answer 6

What purpose does the pain serve?

If childbirth were as easy as taking a tiny dump, any dimwit with a less than stellar genome would reproduce. Thus littering the population with dimwits and weaklings. The pain assures that "stronger" women are more likely to reproduce, making the genepool "stronger" in the process.

Of course the epidural ruined all of that. I guess we need someone to pump our gas.

Answer 7

Are you talking about pain serving a purpose, in childbirth I think every woman on earth would love to know that.

But...one must look at what happens to the body, and then the energy and force it takes to get that little one out into the open, its going to hurt. Some of us have a high threshold for pain but it hurts.

It hurts when we break our arm, what is the purpose there, it hurts when we bump our heads, what is the purpose there, it hurts when we exercise hard, what is the purpose there, my guess its just a mortal physical part of being human.

Answer 8

Having given birth to children, I'm not sure the pain serves an evolutionary purpose. Rather, I think it is a consequence of the evolutionary depvelopment of human intelligence. More intelligent humans or human ancestors survived to have more babies. More brains, means bigger heads. Bigger heads mean more painful childbirth. I see it as the price we paid for greater intelligence.

Answer 9

What purpose does childbirth serve? How the heck else is the baby going to come out? Why is it painful? You squeeze something that big out of you and decide whether or not it's painful. Why WOULDN'T childbirth be painful for any mammal? What does Darwin have to do with it? I swear, only a male would try to over-analyze the birth process. Why don't you ask your wife's ob-gyn?

Answer 10

Well congratulations. It's painful as a consequence of our relatively recent evolution to walking upright on two legs, and due to your babies big, brain-filled head. Having our legs close together means that the pelvic opening is small, so it's a tight fit through the birth canal. But fortunately we're a social animal so others can help with the difficult delivery. Oh and sympathise afterwards