A CHILD IS BORN

Germaine Greer

This essay is an extract from the book “Sex and Destiny” written by a feminist writer Germaine Greer. In this essay, she presents a comparison between the parent-child relationship in the rich west and the traditional East. She shows the differences between a traditional society and a modern society in matters of pregnancy, child birth and child rearing. She tends to consider the matrimonial practices of the traditional societies as having greater advantages than those of western attitudes. Her main opinion is that in the traditional societies the people who surround a pregnant woman make her feel good and lessen her mental pain.

A pregnant woman of the traditional society in the east does not feel alone while she is pregnant because other people also support her. But in the modern society of the west the woman herself should observe her pregnancy. In this society the birth of the child is also unattended and it is done at hospital. But in traditional society the birth is always attended. The people of traditional society use their own experiences in matters of matrimonial practices.

In many traditional societies, after marriage the bride goes to live with the mother-in-low and the wives of her husband’s brothers. She is not thought as member of new families until she has to birth a child. So the bride also longs for the child, but western people think that such mores (custom) are backward, cruel and wrong. The reality is that in western society, too, woman loses her surname after the marriage. Her surname is changed under her husband’s name. In many traditional societies the relationship between mother and child is more important than the relationship between husband and wife. In some such societies the child’s relationship with the rest of his family is more important than with his parents. His physical intimacy with other members may be greater than with his parents.

In the traditional society the child birth is celebrated as a ceremony. It is also thought as the success of the woman. The woman goes to her mother’s house where she is provided everything that she desires. Such tradition can be found in Bengal. But child birth is not celebrated in this way in modern society. There is the present of nostalgic tone in woman in this society.

In the present time the import of western medicine in traditional society has been a great problem. The allopathic doctors are providing expensive drugs in peasant communities, but they are not in sufficient quantity. Modern hospitals have been made by foreign aid in traditional society. But the services in those hospitals are very poor, so the woman is getting great difficulties at the time of child birth (delivery). it is true that death attends too frequently in the traditional birth places, but there are worse fates than death in hospitals. Now modern western technology is forcefully intruding in traditional society but it is true that there is the population explosion soon.

In this way the writer shows her favor towards the methods that are applied in the traditional society in matters of pregnancy, child birth and child bearing.