I hear of women in my community and across the world either having stillbirths or dying during the process of birth all the time. Why?
How can a dog or a cow give birth in the dirt and turn out fine, but if humans did the same, the mom/infant have a higher chance of dying? How can baby mice, who are similar to human babies (naked, gross, blind), survive the “newborn phase”?
And why are babies so big but useless? I understand that babies have evolved to have a soft skull to accommodate their big brain, but why don’t they have the strength to keep their head up?
In: Biology
Humans evolved as a social, intelligent species that necessitated long endurance and extremely powerful legs. You can likely run longer than nearly any other animal on the planet, albeit probably not as fast as them. To accommodate an extremely large brain, human heads had to grow significantly. This is in direct competition with the optimizations of a pelvis for efficient walking. Babies need to be cared for because they come out underdeveloped compared to other species, but at the maximally sustainable time frame to reduce maternal mortality to a rate effective enough for survival. The fact that we are social creatures did not do any favors for selecting strongly against mothers with complications in pre-history either. Human tribes likely would care for and assist any mother struggling to recover because that’s just what we do (not doing that likely strikes you as deeply offensive because of course it will). But this simultaneously means alleviating pressures that might have self selected over hundreds of generations for less severe child birth. We don’t know how many women would die in childbirth in pre-history, but it was certainly higher than other mammals.
In modern times, there are other serious problems that make child birth dangerous. The silver lining for pre historic women is that none of them likely had high blood pressure, obesity, and developing heart failure when they gave birth. But that’s a very common list of metabolic issues in people today with excess food and reduced exercise. On top of that, there is intensely debated efficacy on the effectiveness of treating pregnancy as a medical condition and having doctors involved BEFORE any problems arise, as it has been shown that medical interference can often complicate otherwise uncomplicated pregnancies. On the other hand, not having medical staff immediately available if something does go horribly wrong would also be a disaster, so how best to use modern tooling to reduce mortality is still a somewhat contentious topic
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