9 Where Do Babies Come From?
Where do babies come from?
This may seem like a silly question but it’s fundamental to our lives. We were all born. People make babies and procreate new generations to support families, perpetuate societies, and build futures. Sex, pregnancy, birth, and childcare are fundamental aspects of humanity, even though all people do not participate in all aspects. Procreation involves both women and men, although women are most associated with pregnancy, birth, breast-feeding, and childcare. Many homosexual partnerships involve parenting as well. Thus, gender is not intrinsically tied to parental roles. As discussed in the “Who Am I?” chapter, traditional gender roles often dominate in ancient and contemporary societies, though not always in the ways Europe and Euro-America considers traditional today. Oftentimes, the representation of a woman’s body with emphasized features implies procreation. Moreover, this link of an accentuated woman’s body to procreation generally symbolizes fertility, or the ability to procreate. Human fertility has and continues to be an important facet of global arts, with a linked focus to fertility of animals and the earth.
Women’s bodies
One of the most famous women in all of art history is Venus of Willendorf. You’ve seen her, right? The Venus’ skinny arms rest atop her breasts. A sculptor living during the Upper Paleolithic period (ca. 24,000-22,000 years ago) in present-day Austria carved this representation of a woman’s body, emphasizing the areas that relate to procreation, pregnancy, birth, and childcare. This sculptor specifically chose to depersonalize this depiction, ignoring details of the woman’s specific identity. Because of this generalized and emphasized depiction of women’s procreative aspects, scholars dubbed this figure a Venus, referencing the Roman religion’s goddess of love, beauty, and motherhood. This name is anachronistic (the Roman religion developed millennia after the creation of this sculpture), but scholars use the term for interpretive meaning suggesting that this figurine represented human fertility and the importance of the woman’s body in procreation for its Paleolithic audience. This type of object, of which many are known, likely held ritual significance to its culture and may have been a burial offering.
Depictions of emphasized women’s bodies and the significance of fertility are not unique to ancient European art. For example, remember back to our discussion of Yakshas and Yakshis in the Vedic and Brahmanical traditions of ancient India in “What is Divine?” These figures are spiritual entities of nature, fertility, and abundance. Yakshi (Fig. 9.2) is much larger than the Venus of Willendorf, being created as architectural decoration for monuments at the pilgrimage site of Sanchi in India (Fig. 9.1; check out “Why Does Size Matter?” for more on Sanchi). You’ve probably noticed that despite the size difference, the yakshi sculpture reflects similar strategies o