Chapter 18 Scene 16 Pressure Contraception

The woman picked up the paper, tears streaming down her cheeks.Until yesterday, she thought the situation would not be so bad. When she and her spouse first started living together 7 years ago, the future seemed so bright.But all the good things disappeared unconsciously.Maybe they shouldn't have overestimated their financial ability to buy that first house; maybe they shouldn't have spent so much money on vacation and entertainment in the first few years; maybe they should have noticed the dangers early on. warning signs, and to take countermeasures before deficits appear.Her spouse, however, insists they can afford it.He kept saying that he would have a promotion right away, that money would come in right away.But looking back now and looking at this last bill, the woman finally understands that things will never improve.As she sobbed and thought, her life seemed like a long story of stress and misfortune.

The story starts from 10 years ago.The woman was a young girl in her teens.She had a relationship with a well-off young man.But the relationship between them is not stable.The man always expressed dissatisfaction with her figure and appearance, and the man insisted on the principle that he would never allow her to use other methods of contraception except the cycle method and the withdrawal method.A woman is afraid all year round. She is afraid of getting pregnant and she is afraid of getting fat.Eventually she suffered from food refusal.After a year of such painful days, the woman finally broke up with the man.The woman began to receive psychotherapy at this time, she first cured her eating problem, then passed the qualification examination and found the career she had long dreamed of.Two years later, the woman met her current spouse.They began living together almost as soon as they met.

The woman has lived with her spouse for 4 years, and they have been delaying their plans to start a family with excuses like "wait another month".What's more, they have been looking forward to a man's promotion.But after waiting and waiting, the order for promotion never came down.In the end, despite the serious financial problems they faced, the two decided not to wait any longer.One of the motivations for a woman's desperate desire to start a family is that she secretly hopes that the family will help the two return to their former relationship, which has become increasingly distant since they became deeply in debt.They grew weary of each other, and began to express hatred for each other.

But unfortunately, the woman never got pregnant.Month after month passed, and she even began to worry that she was suffering from infertility.Although it turned out that her fears were unfounded, it took her almost a year from the cancellation of contraception to pregnancy.The women later became pregnant after a trip beyond their means.However, in the third month of her pregnancy, the man lost his job.Within a few weeks, the woman also had a miscarriage. From this dramatic moment, life conditions for both men and women went from bad to worse.The house they bought was confiscated by the bank.The two had no choice but to change houses and move again and again.Every time they move, they have to lower their vision and standard of living in order to make good use of the only income women have.Like this apartment they have now, it's terribly crowded.Living in such a house, summer is better, but in winter it is cold, humid and full of humidity.However, fortunately, the man found a new job later. Although the salary was not as good as before, it at least gave them hope.It's just that the woman and her spouse are in too much debt, and until their financial situation improves, the two of them have to live in that shabby apartment for the time being.

During the worst financial times for a woman and her spouse, the two rarely had sex.Sometimes there is no sexual intercourse for a whole month.After the spouse found a new job, the two regained their "sexual interest" in each other.However, two years have passed since the woman had a miscarriage, and she is still not pregnant.Although their economic situation is gradually improving, the current living standards of the two are still far from the standard they expected.They still quarreled often, sometimes violently, and to the detriment of their health. Thinking of this, the woman suddenly stopped sobbing.She crumpled up the note in her hand and threw it against the wall.At this time, she finally made a decision in her heart.The woman leaves a note for her spouse and walks out of the house.There was a telephone booth at the end of the street in front of the door. The woman went in and dialed a familiar number. When the man on the other end picked up the receiver, he heard a message from the woman. This message had made him wait for a whole month. .He heard the woman tell him on the phone that if he wanted her again, she had decided to leave her original spouse and move in with him.

Ten minutes later, the woman was already sitting in the man's car.After another 30 minutes, they arrived at the man's home in the suburbs.Since their relationship, the man has been trying to convince the woman to move in with him.The man's house is not particularly nice, but compared with the kennel where the woman lives now, this house is like a palace.While a man has to make regular alimony payments to his ex-spouse, and the payout nearly drains him of money, at least he is debt-free.His house was warm and dry, and well designed.What's more, the man still has a car. The day a woman moves in, she spends her days crying and at night making love to her new spouse all night.Early the next morning, she went back to her old apartment to get her things.The man wanted to go back with her, but the woman refused.She hails a taxi herself, and when she walks into her old place, her ex-spouse is lying in bed.The woman started to pack her clothes, while the man kept arguing and abusing her.Finally, the man burst into tears, begged the woman not to leave, and told the woman that he still cared about her very much.

The woman's reaction made her feel puzzled later.The way the man was sobbing made her suddenly recall how attractive he was when she first met him, that young man who was full of fighting spirit and confidence like an athlete!A wave of emotion suddenly surged in the woman's heart, she couldn't help comforting him, and took the initiative to let him have sex with her.However, when the sexual intercourse is over, the woman still leaves the man and walks away from him without looking back.Before leaving, she announced to the man: "Everything in the past is over." Over the next few weeks, the woman gradually adjusts to her relationship with her new spouse.The number of sexual intercourse between them is very frequent.Until one day, the woman vomited in the morning, and she had told the man that she was infertile.So, it was quite a surprise for both of them when they learned that the woman was pregnant.Until the actual age of the fetus is known through regular checkups, neither men nor women can tell when she was pregnant.Later, they figured out that she was pregnant the week they first moved in together.

The woman's ex-spouse never let go of her and her new spouse. He often harassed her and put her under great pressure during pregnancy.Several times, the woman almost had another miscarriage, but this time she managed to hold on.The woman finally gave birth to a baby girl.Babies are a little less than full moon, so they are small, but generally speaking, babies are healthy.After the woman's ex-spouse learned the baby had been born, he began to insist that the baby was his.In this conflicted atmosphere, the woman suffers from severe postpartum depression, she no longer cares for the baby carefully, and sometimes even abuses the baby. If the woman's new spouse did not devote herself to caring for their daughter, the baby would have died. .However, the man also lost his job because of it.It got to the point where the woman had to go out and work.Her new spouse stayed home to look after the baby.

The woman's ex-spouse temporarily disappeared.During this period, the woman finally got rid of depression, her new spouse found a job again, and the two were finally able to take care of their daughter with peace of mind.For a woman, this is the first time in her life that she has such a stable and stable life.However, she did not expect her ex-spouse to appear again at this time.He now has a great career and is rejuvenated physically, mentally and financially.The man insisted that the woman had given birth to his daughter, and he demanded a paternity test on the baby.The woman's new spouse also agrees, because he is very confident in the identification results, and he believes that only by relying on this identification test can the opponent never have anything to say.But he didn't expect that the appraisal result was completely different from what he expected.The woman's new spouse almost collapsed, because the baby he spent so much time taking care of was not his own flesh and blood.

Weeks after the test results came back, the woman returned to her former spouse with her daughter.Men are now living a new and prosperous life, and women are living a happy life.In the three years since they started living together again, the woman gave him two more children in succession. We introduced a woman in scene 15 who became pregnant when she least wanted to have a child. We interpreted this result as: the woman was pregnant at this time to strengthen her own reproductive achievements.In Scene 16, we introduce another woman who is in the opposite situation. She wants to have a child very much in her consciousness, but she is still unable to conceive.We still have to interpret this result here: women are to strengthen their own reproductive achievements.

Many people think of family planning or contraception as a modern product.In fact, none of these concepts are new, and even "planned" contraception is not new.Women in many countries and cultures have put leaves or fruit (or even crocodile droppings) in their vaginas in the belief that it will prevent pregnancy.And even the use of chemical methods of contraception (such as the birth control pill) was not invented by humans first.For example, female chimpanzees know how to chew certain leaves containing contraceptive chemicals at the right time.In fact, tens of millions of years before humans began to evolve, women's bodies already had the ability to plan families and birth control. This endowment is a natural trait that human women have acquired from their mammalian ancestors. For human females and other mammals, the stress is a constant trade-off between "bad conditions" and "avoiding reproduction."In general, stress is often seen by us as a hostile target.Stress also often represents an irreversible pathological phenomenon that robs us of our ability to function normally and effectively.However, stress can also be viewed in another way, and people's responses to stress can also be beneficial.This response can help us avoid certain unfavorable actions when the timing is not right.Stress thus functions as a cure-all for birth control, and for women it is an invaluable tool in the pursuit of reproductive success.Speaking of this, some readers may feel a little inexplicable, let us explain in detail below. For the specious theory above, we can simply use one sentence to explain: "Give birth to the most children as soon as possible does not necessarily help women pursue higher reproductive results." In fact, women are the same as most primates , usually they only have one child per child, because it is very dangerous and difficult for women to raise more than two children at the same time.While two per birth (twins) may help improve reproductive outcomes, the loss of twins is doubled.Unless a woman's circumstances are ideal, she would rather have two children separated by years than expect to be able to raise a pair of twins to be healthy and fertile. Because all women face a basic problem that has persisted since the time of our ancestors: carrying (or holding) two or more children over long distances is a very difficult task for women.What's more, since humans started to walk upright on two legs, the difficulty of this task has increased a lot more than before.This problem has always troubled women throughout the evolution of human beings, and even for women living in modern industrial society, this problem still exists.And for women living in certain societies, this problem makes them feel physically limited.Because women in these societies often also have to be responsible for collecting and carrying large quantities of food, water, firewood and other items.It is very difficult for them to move even with only one child.Therefore, at this time, the means for women to pursue the best reproductive results is birth control, because in this case, it is best for women to wait until the first child grows up to be able to walk on their own and has the ability to resist diseases before giving birth to the second child child. From a family planning point of view, the birth spacing of children is not the only factor affecting a woman's reproductive outcomes.When children are born in ideal living conditions, the more likely they are to grow into healthy and reproductive adults.The so-called ideal living environment, the most important thing is to have sufficient living space and enough nutritious food to maintain health.Only in the above-mentioned ideal environment can the risk of children being attacked by diseases be minimized and the chances of survival most likely.For human beings living in modern society, living space and healthy nutrition must depend on financial resources. Even in today's era, compared with children from rich families, children from poor families still have a lower mortality rate before they reach adulthood. twice that of those.As for those times in history or in the process of human evolution, the gap between rich and poor has a greater impact on whether children can grow up.Because in those days, the measure of wealth was not based on money, but usually on how much grain and livestock a person owned, or even whether he had the best place to get the basic needs of life such as food and water. We mentioned the pros and cons of one-child families in Scenario 8.Regarding this point, there is a basic principle that must be told to everyone: women's bodies will automatically plan the appropriate number of children due to their own environment, and this appropriate family size will enable women to obtain the most children and grandchildren.If she gives birth to fewer children than the aforementioned appropriate number, the number of children and grandchildren she has will naturally be reduced; on the contrary, if she gives birth to more children than the aforementioned appropriate number, she will have to bear the overspending of family expenses or the loss of assets Too much risk.At the same time, this risk has the associated consequences of causing sickness and loss of reproductive ability in children, so in the end result, a woman who gives birth to too many children may actually reduce the number of her offspring.From the perspective of pursuing reproductive results, women's first task is to find out the number of children that is most suitable for them according to their environment, and at the same time, they actually accomplish this task.In addition to the number of children, the timing of a woman's pregnancy is another important factor affecting a woman's reproductive success.Generally speaking, life is full of variables.Everyone's wealth, health, and environment will change over time.And in a woman's life, certain times are more fertile than others for conceiving and having children.Thus, women who happen to be able to bear children in the right period of time will end up with the greatest number of offspring. Untimely birth not only makes children suffer, but also mothers.A woman who conceives at the wrong time can not only be detrimental to her health and condition, but can even permanently lose her ability to conceive.In the case of the woman in scene 16, if she had given birth at a time of greatest stress, the woman would have been irreparably harmed (and if a couple had Even if the child still wants to have a child, this situation may also lead to serious consequences).Because a woman is in such a stressful situation, the risks she has to take also increase.First of all, she may often get sick and even lose her ability to reproduce; on the other hand, there will be increasing hostility between her and her spouse, or she may be physically abused or even killed by her spouse.However, like the woman we mentioned in the scene, she has been trying to delay her production.Her first child was born only after her living situation improved.Because of this, this woman was able to have three children at the same time without shortage of space, time and resources.And even more fortunately, she ended up with a capable mate.If she had given birth to her first child very early, she probably would not have been able to have the other two, or even have the chance to conceive. The best way to avoid pregnancy is of course abstinence.In fact, the woman and her spouse in the scene did take a break from intercourse during the most stressful times.This is not because they want birth control (on the contrary, they desperately want to conceive), but because they have lost "sexual interest" in each other, and the woman and her spouse sometimes even hate each other.And their bodies reflect this emotion in behavior - reducing the chance of pregnancy.Regardless, the women and their spouses did not interrupt their sexual routines for long.Because abstinence can also have a negative impact on the overall birth control strategy, let's explain why. We have already said in scene 2 that the basic function of routine sexual intercourse is not for pregnancy. From the perspective of women, routine sexual intercourse is a means for women to deceive men (in order to prevent men from seeing women's fertile period), And for men, routine intercourse allows them to replenish their sperm army into their mates in order to counter their mates' infidelity.To sum up, since neither sex can interrupt routine sex for long, both men and women will still have sex under unfavorable circumstances, but their bodies will take various countermeasures to reduce the possibility of pregnancy. Especially for women, there are many countermeasures they can take, one of which is already well known: using breastfeeding to suppress ovulation.A woman breastfeeds her baby for several months after giving birth, during which time she is less likely to ovulate.The situation remains the same even if the woman has menstruated during this time.Stopping ovulation is one of the main strategies a mother can take to keep her births apart. In most cases, women can avoid pregnancy during the wrong period, but this result can lead to stress.For example, the woman in scene 16, during her period of severe stress, she never got pregnant, she even suffered a miscarriage because of the stress, and finally, the stress led to child abuse. Generally speaking, stress is usually reflected in many forms. For example, the woman in the above scene (Scene 16) suffered from food refusal because of the uneven heterosexual relationship she experienced during adolescence.The example of this woman is actually very common, because according to statistics, about 1% of young girls between the ages of 16 and 18 suffer from food refusal.The physiological stress caused by the extreme hunger state of food refusal disease is also one of the main causes of infertility.Simply put, food refusal not only stops women from ovulating, it can even cause menopause.But luckily, usually these symptoms are temporary.Few (5% to 10%) of patients with food refusal will die because of their behavior (ie, refusal to eat), some patients (about 15% to 20%) will be troubled by this symptom throughout their lives, and most patients (75% %) can get rid of symptoms and return to normal, healthy lives, and these women can eventually regain their reproductive capacity. Most reactions that can cause infertility are less extreme than food refusals.However, it is true that the more stressed a woman is, the harder it is for her to ovulate.Not only that, but the more stress a woman experiences, the harder it is for sperm to reach the egg in her body, and the fertilized egg is also less likely to implant in the uterus.And that's why women are especially prone to miscarriage during the first trimester of early pregnancy. In addition, it is estimated that although most of the fertilized eggs can reach the woman's uterus under the above conditions, about 40% of them cannot implant successfully, and although the rest of the fertilized eggs can implant, most of them 60% will die within 12 days of pregnancy.Not only that, even if the fertilized eggs can successfully implant in the uterus, about 20% of the fertilized eggs will be aborted within 3 months of pregnancy.And if the pressure women bear increases, the above figures will also increase; in contrast, if the pressure women bear decreases, the above figures will also decrease.In addition, everyone knows that if a woman encounters a spouse death during pregnancy, a spouse has an affair, or a war breaks out, her miscarriage rate will also increase.During the first 3 months of pregnancy, there is also an increased chance of miscarriage if there are problems with the fetus itself, whether genetic or developmental. You may be wondering, why do women need so many birth control strategies?Of course, as long as one of these countermeasures can work, the other countermeasures are unnecessary.In reality, though, this apparent excess response isn't a bug in the programming of the female body.A woman's body must have many countermeasures, mainly because her environment is always changing rapidly.In contrast, since a woman lives in this environment, her body must be able to respond quickly to changes in the environment.For example, suppose a woman's living environment is ideal when she ovulates, but by the time the fertilized egg reaches the uterus, her living environment has changed.At this time, although the female body can ovulate, the fertilized egg may not be able to implant.As another example, suppose a woman's living conditions were fine when the fertilized egg implanted in the uterus, but a month or two later, her living conditions changed again.At this point, a woman may be able to conceive, but is more likely to end up with a miscarriage. Even if a woman's environment is ideal throughout the first trimester, it may gradually deteriorate with the birth of the baby.Usually, the significant changes that occur in a woman during the last trimester of pregnancy are psychological.The first psychological change is known as "nesting": women experience a strong urge to prepare for the birth of the baby.Secondly, this period is also a period of concentrated re-evaluation, and the woman's spouse, family and living environment will all become the basic targets of re-evaluation.During these periods, a woman often appears restless, depressed, and irritable, and can end up focusing all her thoughts on worrying about the future.If a woman's living environment undergoes major negative changes at this time, she is likely to fall into a pathological depression, and she may refuse to take care of the baby after giving birth, or even abuse the baby. Many people are familiar with the term "postpartum blues," the uncontrollable urge that women experience after giving birth that drives them to try to abandon, abuse, or even kill their babies.In fact, because postpartum depression has been widely understood by the public, there are laws in many countries in the world that even stipulate that women are not responsible for their behavior during a certain period of time after childbirth. Looking back at human history, murdering babies has always been one of the main means for women to carry out family plans, and this behavior is still carried out all over the world today.For some hunter-gatherer peoples who subsisted on hunting (rather than farming), about 7 percent of babies were killed by their biological mothers.According to the World Health Organization, infant murder was a popular family planning method in late 19th-century Britain. Infant murder is not unique to humans, it is inherited from mammalian ancestors like other natural contraceptive methods.Some of you readers must have had pets, such as rabbits, gerbils, golden rats, and mice.Anyone who has owned any of these animals knows that if a mother is under extreme stress immediately after giving birth, she is likely to kill (or even eat) some (or all) of her biological offspring.There is nothing pathological about this act of murdering a baby.This behavior simply reflects the mother's subconscious determination.Because they feel that their current environment is not suitable for raising offspring.So until conditions improve, they decide to put off parenting. So far we've only discussed birth control from a woman's perspective, and men have to deal with many of the same issues.In order to raise offspring, men must also expend energy and work hard to prepare an ideal environment for their offspring.Therefore, when the living environment is relatively difficult, the male will try to avoid having offspring just like his spouse. Generally speaking, the interests of a long-term couple are aligned.A woman's body plans the appropriate number of children based on her and her partner's mutual interests, but sometimes partners' interests may not align.At this time, the male body must take countermeasures that are beneficial to itself.Generally speaking, the interests of men and women are most likely to collide in situations where long-term partners are in an environment that is suitable (but not extremely suitable) for parenting.At this time, if a woman meets another man with better genetic qualities than her mate, she is likely to try to have that man's offspring.Because a woman giving birth to offspring in this situation can bring her reproductive benefits.While this reproductive benefit comes with risks—women and mates may not be able to handle it—the risks are worth trying.But on the other hand, the spouse of a woman obviously cannot get the same benefits in this situation. For a woman's spouse, the above-mentioned situation is really a dangerous and delicate critical moment.In any case, he had to prevent this from happening, and at the same time, he couldn't let his spouse get pregnant at this time.For example, the man in scene 16 (the woman's ex-spouse) had been in the above situation for several weeks before the woman left without knowing it.For the man, the only countermeasure he can take at this time is to prevent his spouse from having any male offspring (including his own) by routine intercourse.To this end, the men in the scene do manage to do it very deftly.Because he later won the sperm war with his own sperm. Usually, a man's semen contains two kinds of sperm. When the number of these two kinds of sperm increases a lot, the fertilization rate will be greatly reduced.Some even believe that the purpose of these two types of sperm is actually to help the male body destroy its own egg-retriever sperm.One of the two types of sperm has a cigar-shaped head, so it is called "tapering sperm"; the other sperm has a pear-shaped head, so it is called "pear-shaped sperm". "(pyriformsperm).As we mentioned earlier, stress can make women infertile, and similarly, stress can make men infertile.When a man is under stress, his body will produce more of the above two types of sperm, so these two types of sperm are also called "family planning sperm" (family-planning sperm). In other words, the more of this "family-planning sperm" the man ejaculates into his partner, the less the egg-retriever's sperm will be in the semen and the less likely the partner will be to conceive.If the male spouse has an affair at this time, a sperm war will start in her body.At this time, the "family planning sperm" that the man ejaculates into his partner can assist the man's killer sperm to defeat the other man's egg-retriever sperm.And, even if one egg retriever's sperm happened to escape the censorship and impregnate his spouse, at least the child born to the spouse could still be his.However, if the man gave up routine intercourse due to the effects of stress, he would lose even this one opportunity. For the ex-spouse of the woman in scene 16, he has carried out the above strategy quite successfully.A woman's affair has been going on for weeks, yet a man has a way of preventing her from conceiving another man's child.Moreover, although the woman later became pregnant, in the sperm war provoked by the woman, it was the man (the woman's former spouse) who won the final victory. As we said earlier, the bodies of both men and women have a set of natural birth control methods. When the timing is not right, both sexes will avoid giving birth to offspring. This set of natural birth control methods is mainly subject to pressure.Based on the above description alone, you may come to the conclusion that for the average person, the greater the pressure in the living environment, the fewer children will be born.However, it is not.We should even say that the opposite is true.For this point, you may find it incredible, let us explain the reasons in detail below. Simply put, the factors that affect the "optimal number of children" and the "optimal timing of birth" are different.Whether from a historical or geographical point of view, the number of births a woman has in her lifetime will closely affect the survival and adulthood of her children.In environments where the survival of offspring is hopeless, females may have extremely high numbers of offspring.Because if she doesn't, she's likely to die.Only in the worst living environment, women will have infertility symptoms, and as long as the environment improves slightly, women will immediately become pregnant.On the contrary, in an environment where children have a better chance of survival, the number of children born to women is actually relatively small. We have already explained this point.Because in this case, the probability of each child surviving and growing up is relatively high. Even if a woman has to spend more time and energy on her children, her hard work will not be wasted.The phenomenon of "not getting pregnant at the wrong time, and getting pregnant when the situation improves" appears repeatedly and alternately throughout a woman's life. Simply put, stress acts as a contraceptive in these situations.But because women in different environments expect things differently, they naturally experience different levels of stress from disappointment.For example, a woman living in the North American suburbs may experience less environmental stress than a woman living in a third-world wasteland.In addition, a woman's expectations of her standard of living will also affect the number of children she expects.Regardless of the standard of living a woman expects, the pressure she feels from life will change with the environment.Environmental levels fluctuate, and the pressure on women fluctuates accordingly.Although stress will affect the number of children a woman expects, it will only have a decisive impact when the woman is about to achieve her ideal number of children. Small families (that is, families with fewer children) are not a product of modern times.Looking at human history, in most of the time (from about 1 million years ago to the last 10,000 years ago), human beings lived a hunting life.At that time, the form of human life maintenance was that men went out to hunt animals, and women collected vegetables and fruits. Later, a few scattered tribes established clan societies.The food that humans ingested at that time was rich in protein, so few people died of diseases, but the most common causes of death at that time were: accidents, plunder, and struggles between tribes.Those humans who lived a hunter-gatherer life did not use any form of contraception other than the aforementioned natural birth control (pressure-regulated number of children).Their offspring have a high survival rate.At that time, women gave birth to about three to four children in their lifetime, and two or three of them could grow up. Large families (families with many children) did not appear in human history until about 10,000 years ago.This change was due to the fact that agriculture was gradually becoming the main form of life at that time, many large and concentrated communities developed in most fertile areas, and the main food intake of ordinary people was rich in carbohydrates. In addition to widespread disease, infant mortality was also high.The average number of children born to a woman is seven to eight, and many families have double that number.However, once these large families are invaded by malignant diseases, the entire family may be completely destroyed within a few days.When families of hunter-gatherers encountered the same situation, an average of two or three people in each family survived. In the modern era of human history, the infant mortality rate first fell sharply, and then, after a few decades, the birth rate also began to decline.For Western European countries, this phenomenon of declining birth rates is actually the result of natural birth control methods.因为早在现代避孕法广为普及之前，这种出生率下降的趋势就已经出现了。换句话说，近代工业社会最常见的家庭规模正在逐渐缩小，主要原因不是由于避孕技术的进步，而是由于女性在潜意识当中规划着小型家庭，因为这样她们的子女才更有存活的希望。 可能很多女性读者会对我们在此谈到的自然节育法不屑一顾，甚至会提出疑问：如果女性的身体那么善于规划家庭规模，那么为什么她们总是在最不想要孩子的时候怀孕呢？其实，这个现象只是“有意识的大脑”和“无意识的身体”两者之间出现冲突对立的一个实例。 我们曾在这本书里多次提到，女性的身体对其所处环境的认知可能和其大脑的认知相差很远。例如在场景15里，我们就曾提到身体与大脑之间的对立关系。场景里的那名女性以为自己在战争中最不想怀孕。但她的身体却和她的大脑背道而驰，女人因此怀孕了。而这名女性的例子最后证明，她的身体当时所做的决断是正确的。这名女性后来能够享有繁衍成果，全都因为她在一时“失误”之下生下了那个儿子。 当然啦，我们不能说身体做出的决断永远都是正确的。因为没有人生来就能正确无误地对付一切状况。事实上，任何时代都有人获得较高的繁衍成果，也有人获得较低的繁衍成果。这也证明，有些人的身体较易犯错，有些人的身体则不会犯错。但和大脑比起来，身体犯错的机会却真的比大脑少得多。不过最近一般人谈起避孕，大家反倒又认为大脑比身体更具判断力。就拿使用避孕药、子宫帽之类的现代避孕方法来说，控制怀孕的大权似乎已从身体转移到了大脑。然而就像我们已经说明过的，这种改变可能并不会对女性所生的子女人数发生影响。而且，这些现代避孕法也能辅助女性身体的自然节育机能，同时，还能帮助女性做出决定：“要生谁的孩子？”“要在什么时候生？”至于如何提供帮助，我们将在下面的场景里向大家说明。