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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

"If you’ve never witnessed a live human birth it’s very traumatic with lots and lots of things that can/do go wrong."

I think that is a specific cultural view, to assume it is traumatic. I certainly did not think so.

And that human birth is hard, has the evolutionary roots in going bipedal and walking upright as far as I know. Being upright blocks the pelvis, being down, opens it. Apes who go 4 feet, do not struggle (so hard).

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> I certainly did not think so.

Were you the one giving birth?

No, but it was implied, witnessing alone is traumatic. (And I did witnessed other becoming fathers, who couldn't handle it and required medical attention themself)

And certainly quite some women experience it as traumatic, but not all of them.

I don't think it was necessarily implied, actually. Depends how you parse that sentence. For example it goes on to say "and lots of things can go wrong". But that is very much about the birth, not the observation.

Either way, I am not sure that watching a couple of births qualifies anyone to say whether birth being "traumatic" is a question of cultural assumption :-)

"Either way, I am not sure that watching a couple of births qualifies anyone to say whether birth being "traumatic" is a question of cultural assumption"

No, but talking with women who say convincingly, they did not perceive it as traumatic is enough for me to conclude that births are not traumatic by itself. They can be, but I have the suspicion, that is culturally enforced, but that seems to change slowly.

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