Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. And yet, across cultures and through human history, pregnancy and fertility have inspired a remarkable range of beliefs, rituals and superstitions.
And why not? What thinking species wouldn’t be amazed at the idea of new people simply appearing as if from thin air?
These traditions have sought to explain conception, influence the sex or health of the child, protect women during pregnancy and childbirth. Today, they provide deep insight into how different societies have understood birth and reproduction.
At traditional Chinese weddings, for instance, a red umbrella is used as benediction. An elderly woman whose family extends to sons and grandsons is appointed as “good-fortune lady” and asked to hold it over the bride (the umbrella being symbolic of a fertility tree), as a way of passing on the blessing of bearing healthy male offspring.
Young women in parts of Cameroon and Angola, when they are considered of child-bearing age, are given fertility dolls to carry around and care for. This is meant to offer them some grounding in the idea of motherhood (the girls often sing and talk to the doll, and may pretend-feed it too). But it is also believed to act as a sort of spell or entreaty, indicating to the spirits that determine fate and luck that a girl is ready and willing to be a mother.
Ukrainian and Russian traditions advise expectant mothers not to cut their hair. It is believed that doing so could drain the mother of vitality, and shorten the life of the child.
Across cultures and countries, some superstitions are universal, and self-explanatory, but intriguing nonetheless. To help keep a pregnant woman from tripping, expectant mothers are told, across a range of cultures, that it is unlucky to step over ropes or horses’ tethers, logs of wood or a cat. Sometimes, these warnings would turn into elaborate tales with elements of completely unrelated folklore woven in. Cats in Scandinavia, for instance, are viewed as shapeshifting spiritual forces, so over time it came to be said that a woman who did step over a cat might have a child of indeterminate sex.
Similar advice, from Malta to the Philippines, bars pregnant women from slaying animals, and carrying fire or water.
In cultures from Poland and Ireland, meanwhile, it is said that refusing a pregnant woman’s cravings will doom her child, bring a curse upon the house, or both. This belief often surfaces in regions of scarcity, and would have ensured that a community went out of its way to keep the pregnant woman well-fed.
Brace for a change of mood now, because children were not always welcomed everywhere.
In the small, resource-scarce Marshall Islands, families were traditionally limited to three children, with further pregnancies terminated early on. In other island cultures, couples were barred from having any children in their first three years together, to ensure they had settled in well enough to support and raise it in a challenging environment.
To return to the happier theme of beliefs built around birth, it doesn’t end with the arrival of the baby, of course. A host of other beliefs then kick in, built around keeping this precious new being alive. There are prayers for guidance when picking the child’s name; lore on what the baby should eat and when. Parents today evolve their own beliefs: banishing the word no, self-soothing or gentle parenting, all focused on helping their baby get the best start in the world. The lore may have changed but the goal hasn’t. That is, after all, what we all want for the little ones: all the luck the universe can offer.
(Adam Jacot de Boinod is author of The Meaning of Tingo. The views expressed are personal)
