C-Sections
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I happened across a post about a woman who gave birth at home, and she said she was "proud and educated."
Got me to thinking, what are the risks of home birth?
That thinking led me to wonder if we, as a country, do more Caesarian sections here than other countries (ostensibly for the safety of the fetus ("foetus" for you, Phibes).
Wow...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/283123/cesarean-sections-in-oecd-countries/
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@xenon said in C-Sections:
Also - another interesting thought. Is the average size of the human head (at least at birth) getting bigger because of all the C-sections?
I bet the surgeon's heads are getting bigger.
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Would have been a good “guess this graph”.
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Never thought of the evolution aspect
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@bachophile said in C-Sections:
Never thought of the evolution aspect
I thought it about every time we did a middle-of-the-night section. Really.
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I was reading an article about mainland China, and the number of C-section is increasing there. This article said part of the reason for the increase was a “convenience”.
New moms can schedule a day to have the baby. Doctors can schedule them for a convenient time. Etc
I am sure this is the minority, but I suppose there are probably some that do it because of this.
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@taiwan_girl said in C-Sections:
New moms can schedule a day to have the baby. Doctors can schedule them for a convenient time.
One of the OBs I used to work with did that.
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@taiwan_girl said in C-Sections:
New moms can schedule a day to have the baby. Doctors can schedule them for a convenient time. Etc
I am sure this is the minority, but I suppose there are probably some that do it because of this.Of course. Less stretch marks, too. And less pain.
Over here, one officially needs a medical reason for a C section. Among doctors, there are several code words for the actual reason that usually reference stereotypical C section demanders (big city career woman).
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Modern medical advancements with all their "unnatural" interventions have for sure aided in the proliferation of gene lines that would have otherwise been naturally selected out of the gene pool.
So what? As a species, knowing how to use tools and having the ability to invent new tools are our survival advantages. C-section is just another tool. Someday we may perfect artificial wombs, yet another tool, and no woman would have to endure the inconvenience of child bearing or the pain of childbirth again, and that would be a good thing.
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@axtremus said in C-Sections:
Modern medical advancements with all their "unnatural" interventions have for sure aided in the proliferation of gene lines that would have otherwise been naturally selected out of the gene pool.
So what? As a species, knowing how to use tools and having the ability to invent new tools are our survival advantages. C-section is just another tool. Someday we may perfect artificial wombs, yet another tool, and no woman would have to endure the inconvenience of child bearing or the pain of childbirth again, and that would be a good thing.
Until the day you can't.
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@axtremus said in C-Sections:
So what? As a species, knowing how to use tools and having the ability to invent new tools are our survival advantages. C-section is just another tool. Someday we may perfect artificial wombs, yet another tool, and no woman would have to endure the inconvenience of child bearing or the pain of childbirth again, and that would be a good thing.
Ever heard of "maternal bonding"? Pregnancy is an important part of that, and it's not just psychological - real biochemical things going on there.
If one thinks your line of thought further, then you'll find out that eventually humans are also just "yet another tool". Why bother with the inconvenience of living?
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@Klaus, yes, I considered the “maternal bonding” angle, but decided that it is not sufficiently important to hinder the march towards perfecting the artificial womb. The reason is simply that we have a large enough population of adopted children (and increasingly also children from surrogate pregnancies) to observe and prove that children without in-utero “maternal bonding” with their postpartum caretakers also grow up just fine.
As to “why bother living” (even after one accepts that humans are also just tools), the reason maybe as simple as genetic predisposition to do so. Take, for example, there are no lack of historical evidence showing adherents of organized religions believing quite sincerely that they are “tools” to carry out the will of some “god” or deity, who nonetheless retain their will or instincts to survive (at least up to the point when they also believe that their “god” or deity commands them to die, e.g., “suicide bombers”).
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@axtremus said in C-Sections:
even after one accepts that humans are also just tools
Oh, I don't know, some of them aren't that bad.
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@axtremus said in C-Sections:
children without in-utero “maternal bonding” with their postpartum caretakers also grow up just fine
I believe there's some hard data that, on average, biological parents correlate with the best outcome for the children.
A simple example is child abuse. Statistically, it is way more likely to occur with non-biological parents.
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@klaus said in C-Sections:
@axtremus said in C-Sections:
children without in-utero “maternal bonding” with their postpartum caretakers also grow up just fine
I believe there's some hard data that, on average, biological parents correlate with the best outcome for the children.
A simple example is child abuse. Statistically, it is way more likely to occur with non-biological parents.
Note that “biological parents” are not precluded from taking advantage of “artificial wombs,” should such a tool be perfected. There exists a scenario where the biological parents can still be the ones raising their biological children with whom they never had in-utero maternal bonding. (Even in the present, “surrogate pregnancies” create such scenarios; so chances are good that we will have lots of good data on this by the time we perfect the artificial womb technology.)
Without that scenario, it comes down to whether the benefits of in-utero maternal bonding is more valued than the elimination of the risk, pain, and inconveniences of pregnancies. Even then it seems quite likely that a large enough population will decide in favor of using the artificial wombs (perhaps a bit like deciding to use formulae rather than breast milk even after examining all the evidence showing breast milk’s comparative advantages).
