Huichol Indian men tie ropes around their testicles when their wives are giving birth. When she feels a painful contraction, she tugs on the rope so her husband will share some of the pain as part of their child’s entrance into the world.
According to the Huichol tradition, when a woman had her first child the husband squatted in the rafters of the house, or in the branches of a tree, directly above her, with ropes attached to his scrotum. As she went into labor pain, the wife pulled vigorously on the ropes, so that her husband shared in the painful, but ultimately joyous, experience of childbirth.
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