A Child is Born

'A Child is Born' is an extract from the book 'Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility'. This book has been written by a famous feminist writer of Australia, Germaine Greer. In this essay, she has thoroughly examined the cultural peculiarities of the East and the West regarding child birth and parent-child relationship. 

An expecting woman has to go to her mother's house to get delivered of her child. She has to stay there for at least three months. When the child is seven days old, a new dress is brought both for the child and his mother. This practice increases the sense of security of an expectant mother and removes all the worries associated with child-birth. These ways are collectively and culturally accepted ones. No doubt, modern methods have reduced the mortality of mothers during child birth but they have deprived them of the important experience of child-birth. The whole process has become mechanical. Child-birth, no longer remains a family affair and an object of neighbourhood celebration.