I never equated birth pain with this song or the reason one would not want to become an adult. Becoming an adult does not necessarily mean one has to have children.
In other words re-enacting a trauma or problem keeps one from mental maturity, infantile. It’s like being stuck in the mud and the wheels of your car keep spinning, you keep hitting the gas but the car won’t budge. You can’t possibly move the car until you get out and examine the situation (examine your past), and in this case put something under the wheel mired in the mud (rut), hoping to move the car out and then be on your way.
Phoebe Snow does a song called, Never Letting Go” but at the same time she did a song called Harpos Blues, “I hate to be a grown up and bear my life in pain…”. This might indicate a young adolescent or child who has lived through the child birth of her siblings along with her mother, fearing the pain and agony from witnessing that birth.
