childbirth

84:4.6Child­bear­ing was once gen­er­ally looked upon as ren­der­ing a woman dan­ger­ous and un­clean. And many tribal mores de­creed that a mother must un­dergo ex­ten­sive pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies sub­se­quent to the birth of a child. Ex­cept among those groups where the hus­band par­tic­i­pated in the ly­ing-in, the ex­pec­tant mother was shunned, left alone. The an­cients even avoided hav­ing a child born in the house. Fi­nally, the old women were per­mit­ted to at­tend the mother dur­ing la­bor, and this prac­tice gave ori­gin to the pro­fes­sion of mid­wifery. Dur­ing la­bor, scores of fool­ish things were said and done in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate de­liv­ery. It was the cus­tom to sprin­kle the new­born with holy wa­ter to pre­vent ghost in­ter­fer­ence.

103:2.1Re­li­gion is func­tional in the hu­man mind and has been re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence prior to its ap­pear­ance in hu­man con­scious­ness. A child has been in ex­is­tence about nine months be­fore it ex­pe­ri­ences birth. But the “birth” of re­li­gion is not sud­den; it is rather a grad­ual emer­gence. Nev­er­the­less, sooner or later there is a “birth day.” You do not en­ter the king­dom of heaven un­less you have been “born again”—born of the Spirit. Many spir­i­tual births are ac­com­pa­nied by much an­guish of spirit and marked psy­cho­log­i­cal per­tur­ba­tions, as many phys­i­cal births are char­ac­ter­ized by a “stormy la­bor” and other ab­nor­mal­i­ties of “de­liv­ery.” Other spir­i­tual births are a nat­u­ral and nor­mal growth of the rec­og­ni­tion of su­preme val­ues with an en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, al­beit no re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with­out con­scious ef­fort and pos­i­tive and in­di­vid­ual de­ter­mi­na­tions. Re­li­gion is never a pas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude. What is termed the “birth of re­li­gion” is not di­rectly as­so­ci­ated with so-called con­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences which usu­ally char­ac­ter­ize re­li­gious episodes oc­cur­ring later in life as a re­sult of men­tal con­flict, emo­tional re­pres­sion, and tem­per­a­men­tal up­heavals.

76:4.2Eve did not suf­fer pain in child­birth; nei­ther did the early evo­lu­tion­ary races. Only the mixed races pro­duced by the union of evo­lu­tion­ary man with the Nod­ites and later with the Adamites suf­fered the se­vere pangs of child­birth.

84:4.7Among the un­mixed tribes, child­birth was com­par­a­tively easy, oc­cu­py­ing only two or three hours; it is sel­dom so easy among the mixed races. If a woman died in child­birth, es­pe­cially dur­ing the de­liv­ery of twins, she was be­lieved to have been guilty of spirit adul­tery. Later on, the higher tribes looked upon death in child­birth as the will of heaven; such moth­ers were re­garded as hav­ing per­ished in a no­ble cause.

180:6.7And since Je­sus knew they asked these ques­tions, he said: “Do you in­quire among your­selves about what I meant when I said that in a lit­tle while I would not be with you, and that, when you would see me again, I would be on my way to the Fa­ther? I have plainly told you that the Son of Man must die, but that he will rise again. Can you not then dis­cern the mean­ing of my words? You will first be made sor­row­ful, but later on will you re­joice with many who will un­der­stand these things af­ter they have come to pass. A woman is in­deed sor­row­ful in the hour of her tra­vail, but when she is once de­liv­ered of her child, she im­me­di­ately for­gets her an­guish in the joy of the knowl­edge that a man has been born into the world. And so are you about to sor­row over my de­par­ture, but I will soon see you again, and then will your sor­row be turned into re­joic­ing, and there shall come to you a new rev­e­la­tion of the sal­va­tion of God which no man can ever take away from you. And all the worlds will be blessed in this same rev­e­la­tion of life in ef­fect­ing the over­throw of death. Hith­erto have you made all your re­quests in my Fa­ther’s name. Af­ter you see me again, you may also ask in my name, and I will hear you.

63:4.2The tribal life of the an­i­mal an­ces­tors of these early men had fore­shad­owed the be­gin­nings of nu­mer­ous so­cial con­ven­tions, and with the ex­pand­ing emo­tions and aug­mented brain pow­ers of these be­ings, there was an im­me­di­ate de­vel­op­ment in so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion and a new di­vi­sion of clan la­bor. They were ex­ceed­ingly im­i­ta­tive, but the play in­stinct was only slightly de­vel­oped, and the sense of hu­mor was al­most en­tirely ab­sent. Prim­i­tive man smiled oc­ca­sion­ally, but he never in­dulged in hearty laugh­ter. Hu­mor was the legacy of the later Adamic race. These early hu­man be­ings were not so sen­si­tive to pain nor so re­ac­tive to un­pleas­ant sit­u­a­tions as were many of the later evolv­ing mor­tals. Child­birth was not a painful or dis­tress­ing or­deal to Fonta and her im­me­di­ate progeny.

122:9.1Moses had taught the Jews that ev­ery first-born son be­longed to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sac­ri­fice as was the cus­tom among the hea­then na­tions, such a son might live pro­vided his par­ents would re­deem him by the pay­ment of five shekels to any au­tho­rized priest. There was also a Mo­saic or­di­nance which di­rected that a mother, af­ter the pass­ing of a cer­tain pe­riod of time, should pre­sent her­self (or have some­one make the proper sac­ri­fice for her) at the tem­ple for pu­rifi­ca­tion. It was cus­tom­ary to per­form both of these cer­e­monies at the same time. Ac­cord­ingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem in per­son to pre­sent Je­sus to the priests and ef­fect his re­demp­tion and also to make the proper sac­ri­fice to in­sure Mary’s cer­e­mo­nial pu­rifi­ca­tion from the al­leged un­clean­ness of child­birth.

122:10.2Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small sav­ings were rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing. Even at the time of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies at the tem­ple, Joseph deemed him­self suf­fi­ciently poor to war­rant his of­fer­ing for Mary two young pi­geons as Moses had di­rected for the pu­rifi­ca­tion of moth­ers among the poor.