[HN Gopher] Feminists Fought for the Right to Forget Childbirth
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       Feminists Fought for the Right to Forget Childbirth
        
       Author : serverlessmom
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2022-03-14 20:20 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
        
       | hirundo wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | throwaway0a5e wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | My wife says she forgot it anyway. Because if you remembered
         | you'd never have one again.
        
       | thriftwy wrote:
       | This higlights the importance of people stopping having
       | _opinions_ about what other people need, while keeping their ego
       | as small as possible. This includes doctors, and maybe even
       | starts and ends there.
        
       | drewcoo wrote:
       | "In 1914, Feminists fought for health care for women" just
       | doesn't have the same click appeal as that title.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | hypertele-Xii wrote:
         | While you're strictly speaking technically correct in your
         | statement,
         | 
         | after reviewing the article in question,
         | 
         | I reject your comment.
         | 
         | The title is appropriate to the fascinating details in the
         | article's subject matter concerning a drug for women to sleep
         | through the painful experience (in the most literal sense) of
         | childrearing which feminists demanded access to.
        
           | B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
           | > the painful experience (in the most literal sense) of
           | childrearing
           | 
           | That is one amusing typo ...
        
       | bonniemuffin wrote:
       | Not gonna lie, if I had been offered this, I would've done it. It
       | sounds pretty great to me. Regular childbirth is pretty horrible
       | and I wish I didn't remember it.
       | 
       | It sucks that as a result of women being forced to do twilight
       | sleep even if they didn't want to, now we've taken that choice
       | away completely and you can't do it even if you do want to.
        
       | beardog wrote:
       | Feminists also fought for non-paid public bathrooms, which is
       | certainly a net gain in my view.
        
         | david38 wrote:
         | Unfortunately they've turned into drug stalls in many places. I
         | would happily pay a higher tax for clean public restrooms.
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-14 23:01 UTC)