A "revolutionary" and "heretical" theory of childbirth has been preached for years by a London obstetrician: that childbirth is not naturally painful, that rather it should be an occasion of "exaltation and incomparable happiness." The cause of women's agony, insists Dr. Grantly Dick Read, is fear—a traditional anxiety with womankind ever since the Lord God warned Eve: "In pain thou shalt bring forth children" (Genesis 3:16).
"The more cultured the races of the earth have become," wrote Read in Childbirth without Fear (Harper; $2.75), "so much the more dogmatic they have been in...
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