# Instinctiveness of giving birth in humans **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 13, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instinctiveness-of-giving-birth-in-humans/631409 "2012-08-13T21:36:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instinctiveness-of-giving-birth-in-humans/631409/21 "2012-08-16T03:25:58Z")
Maybe it does not need to be instinctive because women have seen other wome do it for eons, at least until the 20th century came along. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instinctiveness-of-giving-birth-in-humans/631409/22 "2012-08-16T04:16:18Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > I mean, I knew what I was supposed to do because I’d been told so, and the baby certainly instinctively knew how to suck, but overall this is not something I think I would have thought to do on my own, in like an Island of the Blue Lagoon situation or whatever. Maybe eventually you’d put two and two together, but I really don’t think it’s instinctive. Probably not, but in a blue lagoon situation, you would probably have held the baby in your arms at some point, and _he_ would have shown you what breasts are for. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instinctiveness-of-giving-birth-in-humans/631409/23 "2012-08-16T09:37:36Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Maybe it does not need to be instinctive because women have seen other wome do it for eons, at least until the 20th century came along. I would guess that this is a big part of the answer. Adult humans actually don’t do very much by instinct - we’re trained by our cultures. That’s the way we’ve evolved in general to work (compared to less complex animals like, say, bees or ants, which seem to be almost entirely ‘hard-wired’) So as far as caring for a newborn goes - yeah, you figure out how to do it not by instinct, but by tapping into the accumulated knowledge of your culture, like you figure out how to get food, or keep yourself clean. As far as the giving birth process is concerned, my experience is pretty similar to **carlotta** ’s - let it all just happen, and it will pretty much all just happen (Absent anything going horribly wrong, of course, but in those sort of cases _you_ probably can’t do much about it anyway - you need help from somebody else there at the birth) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2012, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instinctiveness-of-giving-birth-in-humans/631409/24 "2012-08-16T10:16:26Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > Yes, good points. I just think that the ability to figure out what should be done (which I agree most people would be able to do eventually) is different from a true instinct. Not necessarily. Instincts in humans can be pretty vague, and work like built in guidelines that make it easier and more likely that we’ll learn whatever the instincts in question are evolved to promote, instead of the kind of rigid pre-programmed behavior you’d see less intelligent animals. To use **Zsofia** ’s example, if your baby is crying your probably at least in part instinctive reaction is likely to be to pick it up and hold it close to comfort it; and from there you’re already pretty close to nursing it. And given that human mothers probably are going to see other women nursing, the instincts involved don’t really need to be very detailed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instinctiveness-of-giving-birth-in-humans/631409.md?page=1)