Note 212 — Chapter XIV · THE ATTITUDE OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN
Reading edition
As an example of an attitude obviously akin to one of the main tendencies underlying the Couvade—a desire to inflict pain upon the mother—we may mention the strong objection that was originally taken to the use of anaesthetics in midwifery, on the ground that the suffering of pain in childbirth was a just punishment for sin and that it was therefore ethically undesirable to seek to do away with or abate this pain.