The Violence of Giving Birth
Acharya Prashant: And there is another reason why kids appear so fascinating to us: it’s the hormones. It’s not only the human kid; the babies of even animals appear so cute. That’s a ploy of Prakṛti (physical nature). Babies have to appear cute; otherwise they are so defenseless that they would be smashed. Babies must appear cute. That does not mean that babies have something extraordinary in them. It’s just that you are conditioned to find any baby cute.
The baby of a pig is cute. The baby of a monkey is cute. Even little snakes you don’t feel like killing. If you come across a fully grown cobra, then in fear or in self-defense or in just madness you may want to kill it. But if you come across a little snakelet just emerging from the egg, you may even put it on your palm and say, “See, how nice, how cute!” But you found a baby. Prakṛti does it so that the snake species may survive.
But this is something that we do not understand—and regrettably, I say, that most women do not understand. They have such a fascination for babies that for the sake of babies, they often destroy all their lives. I am not saying that men do not have that fascination; many men also have that fascination, literally.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or a woman; it’s your responsibility to understand where that fascination is coming from—biological, sexual. Obviously, if you want to have kids, then sex becomes legitimized. Not only legitimized, sex then becomes venerable. So many strands of thought, so many religious schools have emphasized that the only rightful purpose of sex is procreation. So, if you want procreation, then sex is okay. Obviously, you cannot just stand up for yourself and say you are horny, so you want to have sex. If you say, “I am horny and I want to fuck,” then you are a bitch. But if you say, “I want to become a mother,” then sex is so respectable, is it not?
Get out of this obsession with kids. The more you obsess with kids, the more you show how body-centered, egg-centered, and Prakṛti -centered you are. This entire planet is suffering because of man’s obsession with kids. You produce kids as if the kid would forever remain a kid. You totally forget that the kid would soon, very, very soon be a fully grown-up individual. But for three years of coochie coo, you burden the planet with a hundred years of the excreta of that fully grown individual.
For how many years do you get to coochie coo the kid? Three years. And for how many years does that kid destroy the planet? Hundred years. You do not see that. After three years, do you pack the kid back and parcel it back to your uterus? After three years you leave the kid upon the world, or you say that “Now I am busy preparing for the next one, so this one can now go out and destroy the streets.”
It is very strange how religions have often said that it is violence and sinful to kill, but no one has ever emphasized that there is great violence in procreation. Today, ahimsā (non-violence) consists less of not killing. Today, the greatest act of ahimsā is to not reproduce. Violence lies less in killing; today, violence lies much more in giving birth.
But if somebody is assaulting someone, you are quick to deplore. You say, “Oh, such violence, such violence!” And if you come across a pregnant woman, you suddenly become so decent, so gentle, so accommodating and so tolerant. If someone practices black magic, then you say that he is badly conditioned by centuries of rituals, right? If you find somebody practicing black magic, then you are quick to decry, “Oh, medieval rituals!” And how old is this ritual of procreation? I ask you. And why must this continue as a ritual?
Why can’t there be any wisdom in the decision? Why must you habitually procreate? Why must you take it as an obligation to procreate? Why must you feel that a part of your life remains unfulfilled if you are childless? Is it not hoodoo and voodoo and black magic to believe so much in maternity and pregnancy and the fullness of the nest? But no intellectual would come forward to say that maternity today is mostly an act of great violence.
We keep on talking of saving life without ever knowing the meaning of life. There would be a blood donation camp and the hoarding would read, “Donate blood, save a life,” and you feel like asking, save what exactly? Save what? What do you mean by life? A breathing mass of flesh—that’s life? What is life? Something that begins when the child emerges from the body of the mother? What is life? Do you really want to save life? Then first of all learn what life is. Then you will really be interested in life and much less interested in giving birth.
