Why does human birth always have so many complications? It seems as though it’s equally likely to hear about a complicated birth as it is to hear about a normal birth

Question

It seems like so often, and really more often than not, I hear about births having so many things go wrong with them. Why does it seem so hard for humans to hear have a normal birth with a healthy baby?

In: Biology

Answer 1

> I hear about births having so many things go wrong with them

You are more likely to hear about a birth that had problems than to hear about one which went flawlessly. What is there to talk about if everything went completely normally and uneventfully? You don’t hear very many news stories about stretched of highway where there were no accidents, or neighborhoods where there were no house fires, etc.

Now, humans do actually have a relatively difficult time giving birth. This is because there are two major competing factors in human evolution, the benefits of being able to walk upright which favors a narrow pelvis, and the ability to think and use tools which favors a large brain.

But, the brain goes inside a skull which must pass through the pelvis at birth! So these two factors are at odds with each other, and something has to give. Human children are born relatively undeveloped and grow up outside the womb, increasing their head size after having passed the pelvis challenge. Things are still pushed to the limit though, making human birth as painful and dangerous as can be offset by the other benefits.