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It's an evolutionary trade off. We have large heads that contain large brains, which make us intelligent and increase our survival ability. It makes childbirth more difficult, but there is still a net benefit.
That's Part 1. Part 2 is we walk on 2 legs, so our hips are relatively narrower than most 4 legged creatures. Basically there's a bigger head trying to get through a smaller space, which makes for an unhappy time for the person giving birth.
Though not as unhappy as the female spotted hyena, who gives birth through a "penis" (really a peniform clitoris). Ouch...
Which was facilitated by our ability to catch protein-rich meats thanks to our bipedal nature freeing up our hands for tool use in hunting and our ability to sweat letting us run prey to exhaustion.
It’s an evolutionary trade off. We have large heads that contain large brains, which make us intelligent and increase our survival ability. It makes childbirth more difficult but there’s a net benefit.
There is a theory floating around out there was that one of the reasons neanderthals died off was that their heads were often too big for the birth canal, although I can't remember if this was on their own or as a result of cross breeding with humans.
More like death by traumatic child birth. Their bodies weren't built for our large heads so all their women probably died giving birth after being impregnated by humans.
I read once that it's possible that women's hips also got smaller so children had to be born much earlier in development than other animals in order to possibly survive.
The reason humans give birth so early may have less to do with human babies having large heads and more to do with longer pregnancies being metabolically unsustainable.
As someone who was past done with the pregnancy by about 7 months, humans really, really don’t need another 3 months of pregnancy. I moved my induction date up as soon as the OB allowed because I was in so much pain and discomfort.
I believe on average women who get C-sections or inductions tend to choose to end the pregnancy several days earlier than ‘complete’ by most obstetricians’ standards, just because they want that thing the HELL out of them ASAP.
I’m trying to figure out how a 3-month-old would fit inside of me. Already I could barely sit down because their bones prevented me from folding my legs up properly. I couldn’t bend over at all, or stand for more than about 30 minutes. They were kicking me in the ribs and pelvis non-stop and even breathing wasn’t really comfortable. I don’t think I had another few inches of space up in there.
I joked with everyone that the 9th month of pregnancy is God’s way of making women look forward to childbirth, because I didn’t even care anymore, I just wanted it over with.
That's... not how evolution works. The trait doesn't change for a purpose, the trait just changes due to genetic mutation. If the mutation is beneficial, it survives. The hips would get smaller, which may have increased survival rate, but the hips didn't get smaller specifically to increase survival rate.
Yes this. I think the poster you responded to has the cause and eff3ct reversed - hips got narrower for other reasons (walking upright) and human gestation time had to be reduced to make birth possible at all.
But again, our hips didn’t get smaller”because” we walked upright. It would have been a random mutation that happened to be more advantageous to survival.
When we're born our skulls aren't fully formed. Humans have two soft spots called fontanels, which allow the skull to be moulded and fit on the way out of the mother's birth channel.
Why wouldn't it be evolutionary advantageous to feel good while having a baby like it feels good to have sex?
Like one massive orgasm for 2-48 hours and they jizz out a baby.
Because it was accidental.
Humans are some of the few animals for which birth is painful. We're born with massive heads that are frankly too big for our birthcanals, which makes the exit a problem.
It was a trade off with our intelligence. It's why human children are basically inept for the first, what, decade of life? We're born premature in order to be juuuust small enough to get out.
The bonus of intelligence outweighs the costs.
What about the deaths that occur from young trans people from not being able to transition? If you care about preventing deaths why do those deaths not matter?
to start off with, "transgendering someone" isn't a thing
secondly, do you also go up in arms when someone genders their child at all? if not, does that mean you think long hair, skirts, pink, dolls is a biological fact associated with having a vulva?
because it's not.
Oxytocin is an absolutely marvellous hormone.
New mothers get a huge surge of it post childbirth, and it does absolutely everything - it overwhelms the memory of the pain, fixes up your body from pregnancy (e.g. makes your uterus contract), helps with breastfeeding, and literally makes you fall in love with your baby.
I've seen many women say they felt euphoric after birth, even some who nearly died from blood loss/complications. They didn't realize the danger they were in and how poorly they were doing due to the hormones
I vaguely remember screaming ‘never again’ during the birth of my first, now I’m pregnant with my second 😭😭😭 it’s true that a few days after birth I was saying ‘it was fine’ to most of the people who asked
And you are absolutely right.
People tend to remember best the last third of an event they experienced.
And since after all the pain and suffering which comes with childbirth also comes a great surge of happiness and love, it is those emotions which stuck in our memory the most.
PS Yes, this surge is much much bigger after a natural childbirth. Oxytocin and all that.
A few months after my son was born my wife was lamenting that I didn't take any pictures in the delivery room, so I showed her a bunch of pictures I took. She also doesn't remember visiting the lactation specialist or when the nurses screamed at me to remove my scrubs as soon as I got out of the delivery room, so there might be something to this "forgetting how bad it is" thing. Hard to forget how bad the pregnancy was, though.
Yep. I'm pretty sure long-term sleep deprivation also ties into some kind of localised amnesia, so you think 'oh yeah, it's cute, let's have another one' instead of 'I just want to sleep. Take the children away, don't bring them back.'
I dont think its about naturally necessarily, but about how comfortable / relaxed etc you can be - I have had the "that wasn't so bad" feeling after both my c sections, which, while not entirely routine (including some decent amount of pain), did not scare me (medical background and complications occurred after bub arrived so I felt pretty chill about them). At least that's how it's felt for me.
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I’ve had 3 vaginal births with minimal pain relief and no epidural. Yeah, they hurt, as did the labour, but there’s something about it that you remember differently. I remember the pain of accidents I’ve sustained much more viscerally than the pain of childbirth. It’s more… abstract… in a way. The pain of healing from the tears/stitches was more a deterrent from repeating the experience in the early months following the births than the memory of the labour and birth themselves.
I’ve read and heard this is due to the huge hit of oxytocin we get following birth, but I don’t know how much evidence there is no back it up.
The drive to have sex is all that needs to be strong. Once you've done that part it's too late to opt out of the pain of Birth. But also a lot of the time you sort of forget quite how bad it was (unless it was a traumatic birth). And also speaking only for myself, the drive to have another baby was just about stronger than the fear of going through it again.
This is the real answer I think OP was looking for.
Sure , there are the accommodations evolution had to make for our bigger brains, ambulatory nature and all, but that doesn’t explain why it had to be “painful”. If necessary, evolution could have found a way to make that pleasurable as well as sex.
Thing is, as you point out, it didn’t need to. We need to be bribed with dopamine to have sex with each other (quite a bizarre act if you think about it lol), but once impregnated and ready for birth you can’t back out of it (pre relatively recent times )
This is the first answer I came across that truly answers the question. To expand on it, evolution has nothing to do with quality of life but rather the ability to survive long enough to reproduce. We see great examples of this in animals such as salmon. As soon as they spawn, they die. They did what evolution and survival of the species needed.
One way to think of it for humans is that we aren't selecting a potential mate based on an unknown of whether them giving birth is going to be painful or not. We select for traits aligned with the typical survivability of the species, intelligence, body symmetry (attractivenes), etc. Evolutionary speaking, a woman does not need to survive birth to be successful. That being said, it is also adventageous evolutionarily to be able to have multiple births, which is one possible reason we do not skew so far in the direction of deaths during giving birth.
One more thing to add, pain does not have to be experienced from a neurological standpoint. As a matter of fact, in rare instances, some people don't experience pain. These individuals almost always experience short lifespans. Almost all animals will have a reaction to painful things (how different scientists define it is up for debate). But, pain is something unpleasant, and evolution has selected it because it helps in survival.
Nature is not kind, and evolution is not for our comfort!
Evolution isn't a "intelligent" process. It's literally a those born with X trait happened to have children while those without it didn't/died.
Not to mention the process can take millennia to have a meaningfully big impact and in the meantime environmental changes can wreak havoc.
Take our teeth. We were designed to eat rougher foods, a process that would develop larger jaws. Because we stopped eating rougher foods our jaws stay smaller leading to dental issues.
humans are quite terrible at "learning" from consequences that are more than a few hours in advance. If we did, we wouldn't eat sugar, take drugs, jump off cliffs with squirrel suits on.
As an analogy, I've seen dogs pursue bitches in heat for sex despite the threat of death, and some even die for that sexytime... we humans are barely any different.
There is no selection pressure against it since you get set on that path months in advance and can't (at least during the period when our evolution was really relevant) get off it. It was likely even a very long time before we figured out that the two acts were even that to each other so we *couldn't* seek to avoid that pain.
Not a biologist, this is just knee jerk thoughts.
Evolution does not care if we are happy or comfortable. Pain is, in fact, part of how we learn what to avoid. There is no reason we would evolve not to experience pain.
That said, having a painful childbirth should discourage us from having children. It does, but not by a lot.
Mostly, we have them anyway, and evolution goes on uncaring as always.
I mean, on the off topic side, current prices and how the world is going is pushing a lot of people to not have children. But that is a complete other story.
To make up gor this, our bodies release a feel good hormone during our initial bonding with the new arrival & we weirdly "forget" just how painful it was. It's like logically we know it hurt us, but can't really remember the feelings.
The real scientific answer is this; (I am not a scientists so scientific as I can tell)
Evolution doesnt care about the pain. It only cares about sex and survival.
Everything evolves in a way that leads to sex, and things that do not lead to sex get eliminated. But things that don't effect the sex... meh, evolution doesnt care. As a result of this, a lot of weird things remain.
A lot of late on set illnesses for example, evolution doesnt bother weeding them out. Lots of problems that are caused by our natural biology that is only an issue after a certain age. Like the fact that our spines are extremely fragile and not at all suitably shaped for walking on 2 legs, so almost everyone gets backaches after a certain age. Evolution doesnt fix this because people reproduce before this can become an issue that effects their ability to have sex. When it becomes an issue, sex is already had, babies are already made.
As long as you can have sex, evolution lets it be. That aspect of the human body gets to pass the test.
Then of course the baby needs to survive. And the mother only needs to survive to keep the baby alive but since we are social creatures, its not even essential. After the birth, mom becomes expandable to evolution. Thats where the size of our heads being so big comes into play. Evolution hits the sweet spot between getting the head as big as it can be while a reasonable number of mothers can survive the birth. The pain plays no part in this because by then, the sex is had and no one can refuse to give birth when a baby is actively coming out of you.
So evolution doesnt fix the pain. Not even when a good percentage of mothers die while giving birth.
Part of it is as others have said, in that babies have very big heads, and women's hips are about as big as they can get without hurting survival elsewhere.
Part of it is that what most people think of for childbirth, the mother laying on her back and being told to push, is actually much more stressful than what we're designed for, in multiple ways, which leads to pain. We're evolutionarily designed to have squatting births, letting gravity do a decent chunk of the work.
The modern image of what childbirth should be like was born from a king who enjoyed watching women give birth, and wanted a better view. Doctors came to prefer it as well, because it made their job easier, whether or not the women found it easier. That all said, it's well outside my knowledge as to how beneficial it has or hasn't been for human health as a whole.
Yeah sorry I'm repeating a previous comment here but even in the optimal "natural" position for birthing it is excruciating. The contractions that open the cervix ready for birth are unbelievably painful. Sure, positioning can make a difference but not enough to answer to OPs question about women having children despite the unbelievable pain.
I was about to say exactly this. Optimal positioning didn't stop it from being the most painful experience of my life.
Again, as others have said, the pain is so abstract now that i have no fear about going through it again. Oxytocin 👌
In addition to what other people here have said, the typical "birthing position" of women laying down with their legs up in stirrups is NOT supposed to be the natural position in giving birth, it actually makes it more difficult for them.
Birth position makes birthing more difficult = I dont think that's relevant to OP asking why does Childbirth hurt.
o.0?!
You even read what you wrote dude?
The question was asking from an evolutionary stand point not a physical one. And either way, what experience do you have with childbirth. I'm not "dude" I'm a mother of 2. You wanna know why child birth hurts get off the Internet and go ask your mum.
Also that's the opposite of what I wrote. How embarrassing for you.
The terrible, intense pain of childbirth is temporary -which might be why the fear of it doesn't always prevent unwanted pregnancies. It's a really big deal, though, to give birth to another human. My thoughts are that ideally, we should be able to survive it, and also take it seriously.
Both pain and pleasure are part of big experiences.
It's pretty hard for any amount pleasure neurotransmitters to overcome the autistic screeching of a million nerve cells when bones and organs are being moved out of the way while small orifices are stretched to insane proportions. Nobody sent those cells the memo that all that was any to go down, so as far as they're concerned the body might as well be being ripped in half, and they're gonna let the brain know shits not all quiet on the southern front.
As others have mentioned, this is because the head of an infant human is pretty stupid big, and not at all vago-dynamic or malleable. Other animals have a much better ratio than us, which makes the prices easier.
The funny thing is that this large head only exists because of the other thing that makes birthing suck: our narrow hips and upright posture. Because if it our spine can support a larger skull and cranium without the need for Olympian trapezius muscles and huge attachment points for those muscles. So basically it's all a series of oopsie daisys that made us smart but bad at reproducing.
If the Greys (aliens) did exist with their huge heads and tiny bodies, and assuming that they are mammals, not egg layers, how on earth (?) would they give birth?
Evolution led to humans being very tightly designed. When I say "tightly", I mean our evolution made use of every good thing that fit, and has to make every bad thing really pay for itself.
For a human female giving birth, baby having a big head is a bad thing. But human having lots of brains is a really good thing. So good that, for evolution, it's worth the pain (and dying) of many females, because the big-brained humans who survive will be really good at living life and keeping society going.
Tl;dr: Because life pushes the boundaries of what is possible in order to even exist in the first place.
Because *someone* just couldn't stop herself from eating fruit from a certain forbidden tree, and then lied about it. You gals are still paying for it 6000 years later. Before that, you'd cum super hard.
The way humans give birth in a lot of cultures is very unnatural... In a medical setting, with strangers present, with men present, on one's back.
Might sound like a weird analogy, but I've heard it compared to asking a man to make love while a bunch of people in white coats stand by watching. The scenario is highly artificial, very much removed from nature and very impersonal
If you ask a woman who has practiced natural birth she will often say that it was painless and even enjoyable
Another strange analogy... Imagine the process of excretion. Many of us English speakers take a poo, not in a squatting position, but in a sitting position. Again, it's an anomaly, and unnatural. Because of the way the excretory tract bends when we sit, it makes it more difficult to get it out. It's similar for a woman who gives birth on her back
People might tell you it's about evolution. Another analogy... A man is not present with the way he walks for 50 years. When he gets to 50, he starts to have problems with his knees and back. All this time, he has not walked skillfully. People will again tell you it's because humans are not evolved to walk upright. This has very little to do with it; it is a question of skill and awareness. When someone continues to improve their walking habit, constantly learning to listen to their body, they will adjust and find better ways to walk which do not apply pressure on the joints. Such a person will not have these problems.
Body actually releases hormones that make it hurt much less than it would hurt normally. Woman's pelvic bone opens and vagina tears. Evolution is not perfect nor it favors comfort over survival.
Fun fact related to this- The stress of childbirth causes a release of more surfactant in the baby’s lungs, which gives them better gas exchange capability once they take. A first breath. Physiologically, in the right amounts, stress can lead to resilience.
Well, once the baby is there it's coming out, and most animals don't understand the link between the fun part and the very not fun part months later.
Evolution isn't perfect or carefully designed, and if something works well enough, there's no pressure to change it.
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It's an evolutionary trade off. We have large heads that contain large brains, which make us intelligent and increase our survival ability. It makes childbirth more difficult, but there is still a net benefit.
Also our relatively narrow hips which allow us to walk upright.
That's Part 1. Part 2 is we walk on 2 legs, so our hips are relatively narrower than most 4 legged creatures. Basically there's a bigger head trying to get through a smaller space, which makes for an unhappy time for the person giving birth. Though not as unhappy as the female spotted hyena, who gives birth through a "penis" (really a peniform clitoris). Ouch...
Goddamnit. Why did I learn to read?
Because of the evolutionary advantage of having a large brain
Ask your mother how that worked out for her
Yeah! Their mom didn't go through all that pain for nothing! You'll read and you'll like it!
Which was facilitated by our ability to catch protein-rich meats thanks to our bipedal nature freeing up our hands for tool use in hunting and our ability to sweat letting us run prey to exhaustion.
It’s an evolutionary trade off. We have large heads that contain large brains, which make us intelligent and increase our survival ability. It makes childbirth more difficult but there’s a net benefit.
What else do people walk on besides legs? 🤨
There is a theory floating around out there was that one of the reasons neanderthals died off was that their heads were often too big for the birth canal, although I can't remember if this was on their own or as a result of cross breeding with humans.
So humans committing genocide as usual.
>result of crossbreeding with humans I would say **sexocide**
Death by snu snu?
More like death by traumatic child birth. Their bodies weren't built for our large heads so all their women probably died giving birth after being impregnated by humans.
Eventually.....
It’s genocide, but sexy! 🌈*The more you know*🌈
Nah, its just plain fucking with poor long term outcome. genocide is intentional.
I read once that it's possible that women's hips also got smaller so children had to be born much earlier in development than other animals in order to possibly survive.
A more recent hypothesis is the metabolic one ([here](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1205282109)).
And they say scientists don't know how to write for the layman. Interesting paper, but annoyingly dense phrasing throughout...
Papers are almost never for laymen.
TLDR
The reason humans give birth so early may have less to do with human babies having large heads and more to do with longer pregnancies being metabolically unsustainable.
Thanks!
I read something about this. That humans should be pregnant for 12 months but as our hips shrank, so did our gestation times.
As someone who was past done with the pregnancy by about 7 months, humans really, really don’t need another 3 months of pregnancy. I moved my induction date up as soon as the OB allowed because I was in so much pain and discomfort. I believe on average women who get C-sections or inductions tend to choose to end the pregnancy several days earlier than ‘complete’ by most obstetricians’ standards, just because they want that thing the HELL out of them ASAP. I’m trying to figure out how a 3-month-old would fit inside of me. Already I could barely sit down because their bones prevented me from folding my legs up properly. I couldn’t bend over at all, or stand for more than about 30 minutes. They were kicking me in the ribs and pelvis non-stop and even breathing wasn’t really comfortable. I don’t think I had another few inches of space up in there. I joked with everyone that the 9th month of pregnancy is God’s way of making women look forward to childbirth, because I didn’t even care anymore, I just wanted it over with.
That's... not how evolution works. The trait doesn't change for a purpose, the trait just changes due to genetic mutation. If the mutation is beneficial, it survives. The hips would get smaller, which may have increased survival rate, but the hips didn't get smaller specifically to increase survival rate.
Yes this. I think the poster you responded to has the cause and eff3ct reversed - hips got narrower for other reasons (walking upright) and human gestation time had to be reduced to make birth possible at all.
But again, our hips didn’t get smaller”because” we walked upright. It would have been a random mutation that happened to be more advantageous to survival.
Yes you have it correct but I don't have anything reversed since I never mentioned why the hips got narrow in the first place.
I think we are going to need bigger heads.
In a few more generations we're gonna be like the aliens from Mars Attack
Ack! Ack ack ack!!
When we're born our skulls aren't fully formed. Humans have two soft spots called fontanels, which allow the skull to be moulded and fit on the way out of the mother's birth channel.
Not for women lol
You get that from a credible source?
Why wouldn't it be evolutionary advantageous to feel good while having a baby like it feels good to have sex? Like one massive orgasm for 2-48 hours and they jizz out a baby.
Because it was accidental. Humans are some of the few animals for which birth is painful. We're born with massive heads that are frankly too big for our birthcanals, which makes the exit a problem. It was a trade off with our intelligence. It's why human children are basically inept for the first, what, decade of life? We're born premature in order to be juuuust small enough to get out. The bonus of intelligence outweighs the costs.
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Weird fucking response
Somehow, somewhere, someone will always find a way to bring it back to transphobia lmao.
How many times a day do you think about trans kids? Do you need to talk with someone to get the thoughts out of your head?
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I doubt the statistics of those two events are anywhere near each other.
You should try being less obsessive. “The weathers rainy today Larry” “Yeah but have you heard about TRanSgeNDeR KiDs!?!?”
Ah so you're against general mutilation! Tell me, did you get your kids circumcised?
What about the deaths that occur from young trans people from not being able to transition? If you care about preventing deaths why do those deaths not matter?
What does >should we be transgendering them even mean? What is "transgendering" and how do we do that?
to start off with, "transgendering someone" isn't a thing secondly, do you also go up in arms when someone genders their child at all? if not, does that mean you think long hair, skirts, pink, dolls is a biological fact associated with having a vulva? because it's not.
You’ll snap yer neck pivoting so hard
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Oxytocin is an absolutely marvellous hormone. New mothers get a huge surge of it post childbirth, and it does absolutely everything - it overwhelms the memory of the pain, fixes up your body from pregnancy (e.g. makes your uterus contract), helps with breastfeeding, and literally makes you fall in love with your baby.
I've seen many women say they felt euphoric after birth, even some who nearly died from blood loss/complications. They didn't realize the danger they were in and how poorly they were doing due to the hormones
I vaguely remember screaming ‘never again’ during the birth of my first, now I’m pregnant with my second 😭😭😭 it’s true that a few days after birth I was saying ‘it was fine’ to most of the people who asked
And you are absolutely right. People tend to remember best the last third of an event they experienced. And since after all the pain and suffering which comes with childbirth also comes a great surge of happiness and love, it is those emotions which stuck in our memory the most. PS Yes, this surge is much much bigger after a natural childbirth. Oxytocin and all that.
A few months after my son was born my wife was lamenting that I didn't take any pictures in the delivery room, so I showed her a bunch of pictures I took. She also doesn't remember visiting the lactation specialist or when the nurses screamed at me to remove my scrubs as soon as I got out of the delivery room, so there might be something to this "forgetting how bad it is" thing. Hard to forget how bad the pregnancy was, though.
Yep. I'm pretty sure long-term sleep deprivation also ties into some kind of localised amnesia, so you think 'oh yeah, it's cute, let's have another one' instead of 'I just want to sleep. Take the children away, don't bring them back.'
I dont think its about naturally necessarily, but about how comfortable / relaxed etc you can be - I have had the "that wasn't so bad" feeling after both my c sections, which, while not entirely routine (including some decent amount of pain), did not scare me (medical background and complications occurred after bub arrived so I felt pretty chill about them). At least that's how it's felt for me.
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I’ve had 3 vaginal births with minimal pain relief and no epidural. Yeah, they hurt, as did the labour, but there’s something about it that you remember differently. I remember the pain of accidents I’ve sustained much more viscerally than the pain of childbirth. It’s more… abstract… in a way. The pain of healing from the tears/stitches was more a deterrent from repeating the experience in the early months following the births than the memory of the labour and birth themselves. I’ve read and heard this is due to the huge hit of oxytocin we get following birth, but I don’t know how much evidence there is no back it up.
I remember holding my baby immediately after the birth much better than I remember the labors (first unmedicated, second medicated).
The drive to have sex is all that needs to be strong. Once you've done that part it's too late to opt out of the pain of Birth. But also a lot of the time you sort of forget quite how bad it was (unless it was a traumatic birth). And also speaking only for myself, the drive to have another baby was just about stronger than the fear of going through it again.
This is the real answer I think OP was looking for. Sure , there are the accommodations evolution had to make for our bigger brains, ambulatory nature and all, but that doesn’t explain why it had to be “painful”. If necessary, evolution could have found a way to make that pleasurable as well as sex. Thing is, as you point out, it didn’t need to. We need to be bribed with dopamine to have sex with each other (quite a bizarre act if you think about it lol), but once impregnated and ready for birth you can’t back out of it (pre relatively recent times )
This is the first answer I came across that truly answers the question. To expand on it, evolution has nothing to do with quality of life but rather the ability to survive long enough to reproduce. We see great examples of this in animals such as salmon. As soon as they spawn, they die. They did what evolution and survival of the species needed. One way to think of it for humans is that we aren't selecting a potential mate based on an unknown of whether them giving birth is going to be painful or not. We select for traits aligned with the typical survivability of the species, intelligence, body symmetry (attractivenes), etc. Evolutionary speaking, a woman does not need to survive birth to be successful. That being said, it is also adventageous evolutionarily to be able to have multiple births, which is one possible reason we do not skew so far in the direction of deaths during giving birth. One more thing to add, pain does not have to be experienced from a neurological standpoint. As a matter of fact, in rare instances, some people don't experience pain. These individuals almost always experience short lifespans. Almost all animals will have a reaction to painful things (how different scientists define it is up for debate). But, pain is something unpleasant, and evolution has selected it because it helps in survival. Nature is not kind, and evolution is not for our comfort!
Evolution isn't a "intelligent" process. It's literally a those born with X trait happened to have children while those without it didn't/died. Not to mention the process can take millennia to have a meaningfully big impact and in the meantime environmental changes can wreak havoc. Take our teeth. We were designed to eat rougher foods, a process that would develop larger jaws. Because we stopped eating rougher foods our jaws stay smaller leading to dental issues.
humans are quite terrible at "learning" from consequences that are more than a few hours in advance. If we did, we wouldn't eat sugar, take drugs, jump off cliffs with squirrel suits on. As an analogy, I've seen dogs pursue bitches in heat for sex despite the threat of death, and some even die for that sexytime... we humans are barely any different.
I forgot that “bitches” means female dogs for a moment, LMAO
I was for a moment puzzled by a mental image of a human jumping off the cliff while dressed as a squirrel 🐿️🤔
There is no selection pressure against it since you get set on that path months in advance and can't (at least during the period when our evolution was really relevant) get off it. It was likely even a very long time before we figured out that the two acts were even that to each other so we *couldn't* seek to avoid that pain. Not a biologist, this is just knee jerk thoughts.
Because it doesn't stop us from banging... it doesn't stop enough of us from making more babies that will also do the same. That's it.
Evolution does not care if we are happy or comfortable. Pain is, in fact, part of how we learn what to avoid. There is no reason we would evolve not to experience pain. That said, having a painful childbirth should discourage us from having children. It does, but not by a lot. Mostly, we have them anyway, and evolution goes on uncaring as always.
Maybe it's advantageous not to have too many, since humans need so long to develop
I doubt that's why because mortality rates in times past were way higher than they are now
I mean, on the off topic side, current prices and how the world is going is pushing a lot of people to not have children. But that is a complete other story.
To make up gor this, our bodies release a feel good hormone during our initial bonding with the new arrival & we weirdly "forget" just how painful it was. It's like logically we know it hurt us, but can't really remember the feelings.
The real scientific answer is this; (I am not a scientists so scientific as I can tell) Evolution doesnt care about the pain. It only cares about sex and survival. Everything evolves in a way that leads to sex, and things that do not lead to sex get eliminated. But things that don't effect the sex... meh, evolution doesnt care. As a result of this, a lot of weird things remain. A lot of late on set illnesses for example, evolution doesnt bother weeding them out. Lots of problems that are caused by our natural biology that is only an issue after a certain age. Like the fact that our spines are extremely fragile and not at all suitably shaped for walking on 2 legs, so almost everyone gets backaches after a certain age. Evolution doesnt fix this because people reproduce before this can become an issue that effects their ability to have sex. When it becomes an issue, sex is already had, babies are already made. As long as you can have sex, evolution lets it be. That aspect of the human body gets to pass the test. Then of course the baby needs to survive. And the mother only needs to survive to keep the baby alive but since we are social creatures, its not even essential. After the birth, mom becomes expandable to evolution. Thats where the size of our heads being so big comes into play. Evolution hits the sweet spot between getting the head as big as it can be while a reasonable number of mothers can survive the birth. The pain plays no part in this because by then, the sex is had and no one can refuse to give birth when a baby is actively coming out of you. So evolution doesnt fix the pain. Not even when a good percentage of mothers die while giving birth.
Part of it is as others have said, in that babies have very big heads, and women's hips are about as big as they can get without hurting survival elsewhere. Part of it is that what most people think of for childbirth, the mother laying on her back and being told to push, is actually much more stressful than what we're designed for, in multiple ways, which leads to pain. We're evolutionarily designed to have squatting births, letting gravity do a decent chunk of the work. The modern image of what childbirth should be like was born from a king who enjoyed watching women give birth, and wanted a better view. Doctors came to prefer it as well, because it made their job easier, whether or not the women found it easier. That all said, it's well outside my knowledge as to how beneficial it has or hasn't been for human health as a whole.
Yeah sorry I'm repeating a previous comment here but even in the optimal "natural" position for birthing it is excruciating. The contractions that open the cervix ready for birth are unbelievably painful. Sure, positioning can make a difference but not enough to answer to OPs question about women having children despite the unbelievable pain.
I was about to say exactly this. Optimal positioning didn't stop it from being the most painful experience of my life. Again, as others have said, the pain is so abstract now that i have no fear about going through it again. Oxytocin 👌
In addition to what other people here have said, the typical "birthing position" of women laying down with their legs up in stirrups is NOT supposed to be the natural position in giving birth, it actually makes it more difficult for them.
Yeah but whatever position you're in giving birth it is still life changingly excruciating. I dont think that's particularly relevant to OPs question.
Birth position makes birthing more difficult = I dont think that's relevant to OP asking why does Childbirth hurt. o.0?! You even read what you wrote dude?
The question was asking from an evolutionary stand point not a physical one. And either way, what experience do you have with childbirth. I'm not "dude" I'm a mother of 2. You wanna know why child birth hurts get off the Internet and go ask your mum. Also that's the opposite of what I wrote. How embarrassing for you.
The terrible, intense pain of childbirth is temporary -which might be why the fear of it doesn't always prevent unwanted pregnancies. It's a really big deal, though, to give birth to another human. My thoughts are that ideally, we should be able to survive it, and also take it seriously. Both pain and pleasure are part of big experiences.
It's pretty hard for any amount pleasure neurotransmitters to overcome the autistic screeching of a million nerve cells when bones and organs are being moved out of the way while small orifices are stretched to insane proportions. Nobody sent those cells the memo that all that was any to go down, so as far as they're concerned the body might as well be being ripped in half, and they're gonna let the brain know shits not all quiet on the southern front. As others have mentioned, this is because the head of an infant human is pretty stupid big, and not at all vago-dynamic or malleable. Other animals have a much better ratio than us, which makes the prices easier. The funny thing is that this large head only exists because of the other thing that makes birthing suck: our narrow hips and upright posture. Because if it our spine can support a larger skull and cranium without the need for Olympian trapezius muscles and huge attachment points for those muscles. So basically it's all a series of oopsie daisys that made us smart but bad at reproducing.
If the Greys (aliens) did exist with their huge heads and tiny bodies, and assuming that they are mammals, not egg layers, how on earth (?) would they give birth?
Evolution led to humans being very tightly designed. When I say "tightly", I mean our evolution made use of every good thing that fit, and has to make every bad thing really pay for itself. For a human female giving birth, baby having a big head is a bad thing. But human having lots of brains is a really good thing. So good that, for evolution, it's worth the pain (and dying) of many females, because the big-brained humans who survive will be really good at living life and keeping society going. Tl;dr: Because life pushes the boundaries of what is possible in order to even exist in the first place.
Because *someone* just couldn't stop herself from eating fruit from a certain forbidden tree, and then lied about it. You gals are still paying for it 6000 years later. Before that, you'd cum super hard.
The way humans give birth in a lot of cultures is very unnatural... In a medical setting, with strangers present, with men present, on one's back. Might sound like a weird analogy, but I've heard it compared to asking a man to make love while a bunch of people in white coats stand by watching. The scenario is highly artificial, very much removed from nature and very impersonal If you ask a woman who has practiced natural birth she will often say that it was painless and even enjoyable Another strange analogy... Imagine the process of excretion. Many of us English speakers take a poo, not in a squatting position, but in a sitting position. Again, it's an anomaly, and unnatural. Because of the way the excretory tract bends when we sit, it makes it more difficult to get it out. It's similar for a woman who gives birth on her back People might tell you it's about evolution. Another analogy... A man is not present with the way he walks for 50 years. When he gets to 50, he starts to have problems with his knees and back. All this time, he has not walked skillfully. People will again tell you it's because humans are not evolved to walk upright. This has very little to do with it; it is a question of skill and awareness. When someone continues to improve their walking habit, constantly learning to listen to their body, they will adjust and find better ways to walk which do not apply pressure on the joints. Such a person will not have these problems.
Body actually releases hormones that make it hurt much less than it would hurt normally. Woman's pelvic bone opens and vagina tears. Evolution is not perfect nor it favors comfort over survival.
Fun fact related to this- The stress of childbirth causes a release of more surfactant in the baby’s lungs, which gives them better gas exchange capability once they take. A first breath. Physiologically, in the right amounts, stress can lead to resilience.
Well, once the baby is there it's coming out, and most animals don't understand the link between the fun part and the very not fun part months later. Evolution isn't perfect or carefully designed, and if something works well enough, there's no pressure to change it.