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January 6, 2010

Quote

"The human race would have died out if it was left to men to have babies."
--- Colleague at work when discussing a picture of a woman in labour that appeared in the Sunday Age newspaper. She believes, and we all agreed, that men cannot tolerate pain as well as women do. They (men) just don't have any pain threshold level.
Pic courtesy: theage.com

11 comments:

Soin said...

you might never know.a bottle of liquid courage and men might surprise.come to think of it even the baby will be born happily with high spirits.free

Spider42 said...

you're probably right, but thats an argument thats hard to complete..

given the physical pain that men have endured historically though like wartime amputations without aenesthetics, bullets, arrows, shrapnel, accidents, etc (not the best comparison I know..) it not the same thing but since pain is the question - well men can survive a fair bit..

plus remember that a shot to the family jewels can be painful enough to almost kill a man and men fairly often survive hits to that.. area.. its fair to say they have a good threshold for pain.

like I said, debatable..

Eveline said...

I have never been in the physical presence of someone in that kind of pain until I witnessed my sister giving birth. Her pain made my own heart and uterus ache. I don't think I ever want to be in a situation like that again, especially when it has to do with someone I love.
Men will never understand it...Like my bro-in-law. He continued taking pictures! :|

Haddock said...

Some truth in it I suppose.

Unknown said...

@ Eveline: serious?! Pictures!! did your sister take an epidural? Many women here take that, sort of a local anaesthetic. In the picture in The Age, her face was contorted... and it hurt to look at it.

@ Dude: bullets, shrapnel etc, i agree they can survive...but is it ever voluntary?

sanket kambli said...

not sure .. really..
but could have been true earlier..
but we men could have evolved to handle pain.. but at current stage I don't think so..

Sumit said...

I have a question back to you...

If woman were given a choice by God to be able to give birth without labour pains, will they not choose so?

It is not voluntary again, they have to rise to the occasion.. giving birth to life can be such a fulfilling experience that i think even men will rise to such an occasion if that was the biological make up :)...

Sree said...

Dear men, its not just about the labor pain. Its about the months that you carry a life inside you.Sometimes climbing 100 steps up with that heavy tummy to reach your office since the elevator wasnt working, or bleeding wihtout a reason on your 2nd month and still praying for that baby to be okay or doing the chores because you have to or because the husband dont understand nor cares.An almost whole year you spend dealing,knowing the changes and accepting it all without a doubt.And then comes the final pain.The pain that comes and goes, inbetween you take a breath and prepare to cry ,and you push n push,not to let go off the pain, but for the baby to come out safe.

Epidural helps, but there are some criteria in which the doc decide to give it.The risk of taking it being back pain later in life.

You dont know.Things which you dont know and can never understand, theres only one thing you can do, go hug you mom, your wife and say you love her.

Unknown said...

@ Sree: .... my god. That was really, really well said. And very heartfelt...and I know exactly what you mean.

Espèra said...

Well. I kinda had a debate about this with a guy and to support my argument I looked up studies online. While some places said that it can be a sociological thing too, that women are socially supposed to express pain more, almost everywhere it said that men have a higher pain threshold and a higher pain tolerance.
:|

Anonymous said...

What a ridiculously ignorant thing to say. This is what happens when feminism comes into the equation.

Women's bodies and pain threshold levels were adjusted my evolution to precisely correspond to child rearing and labour. If childbirth were "left to men" (what does that mean anyway?), evolution would have adjusted men's abilities to accept that exact pain threshold. Why? Because men who could bear the pain of childbirth better would pass their genes on and over time, the species would become better and better and handling labour pains.

But why ruin the general point of agreement (full consensus no less!) with hocus pocus science stuff, when we could just read some feminist batshit?