Here’s an example of how our cultural mythology of birth is affected by them: In real life, labor usually starts rather gradually. In dramas, it usually strikes like lightning. One minute a character is brushing her hair or enjoying dinner in a restaurant, and within seconds her labor overwhelms her with such force that she is immediately carried away to the hospital to be saved from it. Pain is portrayed as if it could be fatal. Women and girls raised on this sort of thing without a source of more accurate knowledge learn to equate labor pain with danger.
