Human beings are perhaps the only species where normal childbirth is intensely painful for the women. This acute pain is rated amongst the highest a human being can experience and still live. Religious stories aside, why are we, the most intelligent of all other species sharing our world, singled out for this lamentable reality?
Scientists claim our evolution resulting in our larger brain is responsible. We have the biggest brain and our cranium has enlarged accordingly over the generations to safely house it. It is the passing of this large cranium which causes the most pain during delivery. Ironically, the resulting increase in intellect has not granted similar evolutionary redresses to women’s bodies to compensate for bigger skulls of babies.
Even today, evolution seems to continue raging this storm against us. Human beings are no longer subject to normal adaption processes since necessity and survival are the core catalysts of evolutionary reforms. We are no longer adapting to our environment but rather force our environment to adapt to us most often. Hence the failing equilibrium of our planet. But evolution is happening just the same, just not normally. Our heads are getting bigger, our intelligence is increasing and our bodies are getting smaller. That sounds like a contradiction since research shows that our bodies are bigger than our parents but that’s a transient phase mainly because of easier access to better food and nutrients which our ancestors did not have.
We are getting less active physically. We no longer need the mechanics of our bodies to forage from one place to another or participate in mass manual labor for survival. We have technology for that. And since we are no longer dependent on our physical prowess en masse, it is diminishing.
This isn’t the case with our brains. We have reached the point where we no longer understand the technology we’ve created because our brains are not sufficiently big enough to fathom it individually. And like hive psychology, we have no choice but to distribute its natures across millions of minds – but with a difference. We are forced to trust others to hold up their end of the deal.
Biologically we are not trusting, it goes contrary to our survival instincts. So our minds are working overtime to compensate and acquire as much intelligence per head as possible. This is forcing our bodies to evolve bigger brains, increasing our cranial capacities as a result.
What it comes down to is that our intelligence is the price our mothers have to pay. And as this intellect goes up, the price also increases in terms of physical distress for women giving birth.
With our bodies getting smaller and heads getting bigger – think Martians from classical sci-fi, what will happen to the gender responsible for continuation of our species? Will normal childbirth be completely replaced by caesarian deliveries with women’s shrinking bodies no longer able to birth our growing heads?
Perhaps it’s also possible for our intelligence to create a more noble solution to ease this needless suffering. If we extrapolate, eventually our growing heads will pose a risk in delivery no future woman would willingly undergo. Will women go all out against pregnancy and our posterity will be forced to depend on lab-babies on an industrial scale – baby-farming anyone? Or will doctors create circumstances where babies can be safely delivered, say, after six months of pregnancy, or maybe even less, when fetal heads are small enough for normal childbirth without too much pain?
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