Did God punish women with painful childbirth?

Whether you recognize it or not, Christian faith and the bible underpins Western culture. It has affected our codes of justice, work ethic, sense of charity and the beliefs and misunderstandings surrounding sex, relationships and childbirth. Fear, pain and guilt have tended to be defining characteristics; and this is not reserved only for the religious. In now way am I diminishing the message of love, acceptance and charity the Bible also supports. However, I’d like to focus on the disempowering Christian belief that according to the Bible, God punishes women with physical agony in childbirth for Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, and how this belief is closely intertwined with current medical practice and our society’s acceptance of painful child birth.


The Bible clearly teaches that giving birth is a blessing to women and in a number of places strongly upholds the role of motherhood and women in general. The scriptures do not degrade womanhood nor does not label child bearing as a curse. As with many misunderstandings arising from the Bible, it is the interpretation and the translation which must be looked at more deeply. Genesis 3:16 is the passage commonly quoted by those who believe women have been "cursed to give birth in pain". ( it outlines Eves punishment for having eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.) From a number of translations of that passage and in particular - the Hebrew word is translated as "pain" for the woman and "toil" for the man, it is clear that the translator's cultural beliefs have biased his judgment as a scholar of the text. The best description of giving birth is toil, or labor. From research, the so-called "curse of Eve", cannot be traced to the Scriptures or to early Judaism. It is first found in distorted Christian teachings of the third and fourth centuries A.D. Christian teachings which also upheld that abstinence, even in marriage, was the way to salvation. Thus the beginnings of the beliefs around sex being bad or dirty, sinful or unclean – even in marriage. God’s intent in Genesis 3 also needs to be reconsidered. Even as God confronted Eve, he immediately promised a Savior to come through her descendants. Simplifying it to the commandment of punishment misses the passages insights. Other scriptures show a loving God, who is concerned for the good of the all humankind, disobedient or otherwise.
We as a society ( western one at least) have ignored many natural birthing practices embraced by so called primitive or sheltered civilizations. Pain during child birth was actually a rare occurrence in our ancient ancestry. In religious fervor midwives, or wise women, were burned at the stake and falsely accused of witchcraft throughout Europe, especially if they administered any form of pain relief. Women were told that it was Gods Will that they suffer during birthing as penance for Eves sin.
Pain and death was not strongly associated with childbirth until the 16th and 17th century when people began to flock to the cities during the industrial revolution. The masses of people no longer lived from the toil of the land, but worked in cottage industries or factories and used coin to trade for food, goods and services.
With cities growing, the need for formalized medical support outside monasteries, gave rise to small hospitals which due to lack of understanding of hygiene were a hot bed of disease. No longer were people able to access a local herbalist or healer as they had done in the past. The epidemics of child bed fever as women began delivering in the "houses of charity" created unhealthy conditions for our great great grandmothers to birth in.

Anesthesia was withheld from laboring women until the mid-nineteenth century so as not to interfere with God’s “punishment.” In that environment, childbirth was indeed an event which terrified women. This terror was compounded by climbing rates of death from post-partum infection through physicians who did not understand the need for sanitation and hygiene. There have been reports of clergymen who refused to baptize babys whose mothers asked for pain relief during labor. Given the strong social status the church held in most western societies at this time, to deny a person baptism was to shun them for their life, depleting their prospects in jobs, work and a future family life.
Many women chose to birth their children at home as little as 50 years ago as hospitals were still seen as places for the chronically ill or injured to go to. Childbirth became a big business in the time of the baby boomers and whole industries birthed at the same time.
Medical advances and discoveries with hygiene and sanitation have made hospitals a safer environment for patients. With the migration of the population and de centralization of family units, the medical system stepped in as surrogate support for birthing. Family wisdom and caring was often no longer available due to distance, so women chose to go to hospital to birth and began to give their choices and options away. Birthing became a medical condition and treated as an illness; one to be medicated and eased with pain killers or by passed with surgery. Society accepted through the last few centuries that childbirth was painful and the ‘secret’ womens groups who whisper and hide facts from the uninitiated ( non mothers) only add fuel to this belief. There seems to be a one ups (wom)manship on how much pain was endured, or of how long labor went on within these circle and cynical vultures ready to swoop down on a newly pregnant women to tell tales of gory and pain. With something as strong and embedded as this belief, it is difficult to turn the tide backed up by society, pharmaceuticals and the medical practice.
Being a mother is much more than just a physical act of birthing. The bonding with a baby is a fundamental part of living and if anesthetized, this bond may be impared. I don't believe God made childbirth painful - a loving God as described in the Bible and by Christians, would never wish to punish every woman for all time..again, keeping in mind that the men who decrypted the scriptures had to make many assumptions (ill matched knowledge of many things for example a celibate monk who has been in a monastery all his life would have little real knowledge about women's anatomy...when translating the punishment of Eve and of birthing) Thankfully there are many women who are wanting to reconnect with the old wisdom, to reject C sections as a run of the mill procedure ( don't get me wrong - I am GLAD we have medical intervention and the OPTION of having assistance.. I am distressed at the blase approach so many women approach birthing and never consider doing anything except having a C section..). The physical pain and birth process of a conscious woman certainly is to be respected, and to seek to relieve that pain is a natural thing to want to do. I'd love to see more informed choices for women - rather than what suits the Ob and for women to reconnect with her true nature, rather than accept what is offered on a medical script.