Giving Birth, Babies and Men

Women often accuse men of not participating in their giving birth and being unaware of the pain they must go through. It seems men should suffer as well!

A woman's partner can sometimes feel the effects of her pregnancy. (jlp)

Today’s society has forgot all about ancient customs and their strong symbolism. Men have at present a maternity leave, and the greatest pain they experience during child birth is their partner sticking her nails into their palms during contractions. However, many peoples across the world have been practising a custom that we will call couvade, after the French word couver (hatch). The tradition is widely used and comes in a number of variants. The modern term for it is sympathetic pregnancy, although the meanings of the two terms don't overlap entirely.

Sympathetic pregnancy can be seen as a way for men to establish their role in the baby’s life as early as possible. (jlp)

The seriousness of the man’s role in a woman's giving birth to a child was taken to the maximum limit by the Huichol tribe from Mexico. A woman was giving birth on a carpet, and behind her there was a sort of a platform on which a man was lying or sitting. He had a rope tied around his testicles, which was held by the woman giving birth. When the pregnant woman was experiencing a contraction, she pulled the rope.

Couvade is common when the role of a father isn't strong in a specific society, and the father thus tries to make the connection with a child through symbolic birth. Fatherhood wasn't important in matriarchal societies. By participating in the delivery, the presumed father gained the right to be the upholder of the family tree and family inheritance.

The other explanations of the rite are magically animalistic. A man tries to attract evil spirits by imitating birth and thus avert their attention away from the child and the mother. He tries to ensure the spirits will be friendly to the child. The phenomenon has been known since Antiquity and was widely practised among the tribes of North and South America, Africa, China and India. Couvade is still alive, for instance among the Basques.

Couvade syndrome is more common than one would expect, but we often fail to recognize it. (jlp)

 
 
Couvade involves imitation of pregnancy, which means that a man may lie in bed and even get a swollen belly, vomit and similar. Couvade may begin in the third trimester or upon the actual labor. It's interesting that even today the symptoms of sympathetic pregnancy appear, but we decreasingly identify them as such. For example, men complain about problems with nerves, nausea, reduced activity, and gaining weight. This, along with pains in the back and other symptoms, can all be linked to the above phenomenon.