> In the case of a woman who has a fully developed muscular system and has had ample physical exertion all through the pregnancy, as is common with all more primitive peoples, nature provides all the necessary equipment and power to have a normal and quick delivery. This is not the case, however, with more civilized Women who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement.
Ignoring the depressingly-predictable classist/colonialist tone, it's interesting to note that modern medicine recommends things like pelvic floor exercises to help with childbirth, primarily to prevent unwanted urination during childbirth and incontinence afterwards it seems.
But this observation - if correct - might lead us to conclude that certain types of exercise help the actual act of childbirth more than others.
Do we know if this has been corroborated / debunked? I'm wondering if there are any agencies out there with specific recommendations for those who are trying for a baby, for exercises that are actually proven to make childbirth quicker or less painful?
There exist gyms and personal training education for pregnant and postpartum women. I considered sharing one here, but I realized that the comportment of many on HN would be disruptive to them.
Ignoring the depressingly-predictable classist/colonialist tone
Isn't it an anti-classist tone if anything? It's associating "civilization" with weakness, confinement, and a lack of opportunity, and associating primitive living with fully developed muscles and says it provides for a normal and quick delivery. How is that not an endorsement of primitive living? I don't see how you can call that paragraph colonialist unless you see the word "civilized" and just turn your brain off.
1) It divides people into "primitive" and "civilized", which delineates an ingroup and outgroup;
2) The document is written for civilized people, because surely the document wouldn't call its readers primitive;
3) The flip side of "developed muscles" is "barbaric lifestyle" - the "proper" thing for women at the time was NOT to develop said muscles, but rather to maintain a "trim figure" ("one of the best exercises for a woman are her household duties, and that besides those she doesn't need more exercise", from a 1941 article);
4) In sum, given the context, the "endorsement" is a grudging admission that on this one issue the "primitive" women might be stronger, but in no way an overall endorsement of the lifestyle.
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about someone you've never met and know nothing about.
It divides people into "primitive" and "civilized", which delineates an ingroup and outgroup;
Right, in the context of "look at us poor pathetic civilized people whose broken bodies need this apparatus to reproduce unlike those strong primitives who can do it in the normal way.
Yeah I think it's pretty undisputed there are downsides to the current day "civilized" life of office jobs and automotive vehicles consisting of precious little necessitated physical exertion or exercise of any type.
Colonialist: To my mind, it was the 's' on the phrase "primitive peoples". In other words, it is implying that people in our "civilized" society suffer from this, but those more primitive peoples outside of our society may be exempt - simply because they do uncivilized things that our civilized ladies wouldn't dream of.
Classist: Because of course, that's bunkum. Because even in 1960's "civilized" american society, maybe the upper class lady would keep herself "in confinement" but that doesn't mean that the majority of women would or could.
So no, I wouldn't say it's anti-classist.
(Note: I had presumed that George Blonsky was a doctor - but no, apparently he was a "mining engineer". I suspect he would have been reasonably well educated, but maybe not if he thought spinning pregnant women around to expel their babies was a good idea. So I don't know - maybe the classism was accidental. But it's definitely there.)
I do not know any recommendations for quicker/less painful childbirth.
However, pregnant women do currently get completely different advice then they used to. As in, advice for me was to continue doing sport normally, just not stuff where you risk falls or hits (skiing, climbing, box). You get obvious advice to not overdo it, but hiking, running, swimming, cycling, dancing etc are recommended.
Anecdotally, older generation tended to act as if I was irresponsible or somehow courageous for doing these, recalling that they had been expected to stop all that for the sake of a baby.
> with more civilized Women who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement.
Note massive cultural shift in here even outside of pregnancy - western women have all the chances in the world to develop any muscles they please. More or less, we are expected to care about fitness or it is at least normal to care about it.
You’ve accepted the assertion from someone of supposed authority without question.
It’s a pretty awful assertion, as it both blames and infantilizes those helpless and weak “modern women” while dismissing the medical needs of the hearty and hale savages.
I suppose those modern women wouldn’t need the spin bed if they spent more time working at home. Great-grandma scrubbed those floors on her knees, and popped out 12 kids, no problem.
The proposition relies on the notion some sort of muscle development is an actual problem.
I'm alluding to the romantic notion of the "noble savage" in this context, as the material assumes that "primitive" peoples somehow didn't have any problem in this area.
I do not think it is appropriate to imply non western people are "less civilized" or call them "primitive".
Also, the part about "civilized Women who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement" is simply untrue today. We all have tons of opportunities to develop whatever muscles we desire to develop. We just need to take those opportunities.
Note that western people, including women, exercise a lot. Including or especially middle and upper class ones. Conversely, if you need to spend whole day in the market, selling stuff and plus you care about 4 kids and plus you are barely able to feed family, you wont be running 10km daily or what not.
Running 10k a day is definitely not the norm, most people don't even walk 10k a day.
Even then, sitting 8h a day in front of a computer is a quite modern plague and the root cause of most "back pain" issues (an insanely prevalent issue, even just counting medically reported cases) because of core atrophy.
For people who do run, which is quite frequent hobby, 10km is not all that much. My point is, quite a lot of educated people or middle class people do sport frequently and regularly. The back pain you mention is sometimes the trigger for it.
Whether it is running, going to the gym, calisthenics, yoga, or swimming, the richer "mollycoddled" and supposed "Karens" op mockingly referenced as spoiled are specifically the people who do sport the most.
I think the point is that if you don't walk 10k per day it doesn't make you "civilized". It just makes you a person who doesn't walk 10k per day. No judgement required
I don't read "primitive" to mean "modern-day people who live in other countries", but rather "people who lived thousands to tens of thousands of years before us", which is both much closer to the definition of the word and something which would be relevant to understanding why the author fancies that we might need this contraption now and not previously in our evolutionary journey. (And therefore I find it a completely inoffensive description.)
If you take that reading of the word, I think it's fair to say that the 90th percentile in fitness modern human aged 20-40 is less physically fit than the median human aged 20-40 of 10K to 100K years ago likely was.
If you read primitive to mean, say 10-100K years ago, it's definitionally true that humans are more civilized today than we were then, with what we think of and call "civilization" starting well within the last 10K years with the rise of agriculture, and has nothing to do with how one pronounces certain words or holds their pinky while drinking.
The article is using present tense: "as is common with all more primitive peoples" rather then past tense "as used to be common tens of thousands of years ago". The patent is from 1965, primitive was not reserved for thousands years ago back then afaik.
> If you take that reading of the word, I think it's fair to say that the 90th percentile in fitness modern human aged 20-40 is less physically fit than the median human aged 20-40 of 10K to 100K years ago likely was.
I do not think so. I would be pretty sure that 90th percentile in fitness modern human will be much better fit then median human aged 20-40. We have better food which does a lot. We have better healthcare. The more fit people exercise a lot and focus on raising their fitness specifically.
It is pretty sure that top 10% men can lift more heavier weights (have better raw strength) then median back then. Median men back then might have better endurance when it comes to long walks.
Primitive implies of lesser intelligence, sophistication, and education. I’m pretty sure you’d be offended if anyone called you primitive, so why is it surprising to you that people from non-western cultures prefer not to be called primitive? Additionally, the word „civilised“ carries lots of baggage from slavery. Unless you’re intentionally insinuating that, there is literally no reason to use that word today, anymore.
Say what you mean. If you mean with some weak or atrophied muscles, say that. Don't use "civilized" to hide that fact because it means someone in good shape would be "primitive". Which means not only the choice of words is in fact classist/colonialist, it is also not a very logical statement (sorta fine on HN but sorta bad for a scientific paper). But yeah, times were different (as a statement of fact, no sarcasm).
Ignoring the depressingly-predictable classist/colonialist tone, it's interesting to note that modern medicine recommends things like pelvic floor exercises to help with childbirth, primarily to prevent unwanted urination during childbirth and incontinence afterwards it seems.
But this observation - if correct - might lead us to conclude that certain types of exercise help the actual act of childbirth more than others.
Do we know if this has been corroborated / debunked? I'm wondering if there are any agencies out there with specific recommendations for those who are trying for a baby, for exercises that are actually proven to make childbirth quicker or less painful?