英语听力文摘 English Digest 376、为什么生孩子很痛苦？（在线收听）
Why Giving Birth Hurts
为什么生孩子很痛苦？
Y: Don, you sure are lucky don’t have to give birth. I’m glad we’re an intelligent species, but boy, that infant head feels mighty large going through that narrow birth canal. And then, after all that, the baby comes out facing down and backwards, which means you’re helpless to assist it, or even to untangle it from the umbilical cord.
D: Well, Yeal. According to evolutionary anthropologists, babies of the earliest humans had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out facing backwards. This was a result of humans learning to walk on two feet. As the pelvis became optimized for walking, the birth canal developed twists and turns that meant the baby had to rotate in order to keep its head and shoulders aligned with the widest part at all times.
Y: And then our brains also got bigger.
D: Which meant more twists and turns.
Y: And backwards-facing babies, stupid,huh?
D: Well,you know,Yeal.Some of the earliest humans learned to compensate for the difficulty of giving birth by receiving assistance during childbirth, which made a huge difference in terms of survival.
Y: So there might be an evolutionary advantage to having someone help you give birth.
D: Some anthropologists certainly think so and conjecture that human females who gave birth to backwards-facing babies, and females who had assistance because they felt particularly anxious about the birth, ended up doing better than females who didn’t. After all, if problems arise during labor, having another person around can make the difference between life and death.
Y: 唐，你很幸运不用生孩子。我很高兴人类有着聪明才智，但是天啊，婴儿的脑袋要从狭窄的产道出来，那是很痛苦的。而且，经历过这一切后，宝宝出来是面向下和倒过来的，你根本没办法协助它，或者甚至不能帮忙解开脐带。
D: 根据人类进化学家，人类早期时候的婴儿生出来是有二分之一的可能性是面向后面的。这是人类学习用两只脚走路的结果。随着盆骨越来越适应走路，产道就变得迂回曲折，婴儿就得旋转过来保持它的头和肩膀总是与最宽的部分在同一平面上。
Y: 然后头也会变得更大。
D: 也意味着更多的扭转。
Y: 倒着出生的婴儿，很可笑吧。
D: 你知道吗？最早时期的人类学会弥补分娩的困难，他们通过在分娩是接受援助，这在生存方面起了非常重要的作用。
Y: 因此，也许有一种进化优势能请人帮助你生育。
D: 一些人类学家当然也这么想过，并且他们推测那些女性生下面向后面的婴儿，和在生育时得到帮助的女性比没有援助的生育女性生产更顺利。毕竟，在分娩时有问题出现，有人在身边是能够于生死之间起到很大作用。