Would you consider it a failure or success of mankind if we make natural childbirth impossible?

I think it would be dangerous. What if there comes a time when the medical technologies that make C-sections so easy would stop being available. All of a sudden, a lot of women will die in childbirth along with their babies. Only a few will have small enough heads to be born naturally. We’d see a sudden population decline. But then again, if we lost the technology, we’d probably be seeing a population decline for other reasons as well.

I don’t see it as an issue of failure or success. It is what it is. Another problem to solve.

Does it have to be either or? Adaptation is adaptation. Your thesis paints an interesting picture of the physical appearance of future man. Add the wasting away of legs because we ride everywhere. I think we may well destroy the planet before we reach that future man. So be it.

If it is true evolution is causing larger heads and smaller pelvises (pelvis’? pelvi?) that is pretty scary. I know I have a relative who could not birth her babies she was too small and the babies too huge. They were not huge from gestational diabetes or anything. She did go a few days late, she is quite petite, and her husband is much taller than her, and his sisters, family, broader boned. Different people making babies might cause some of the problems maybe? She is from a shorter family from the mediterranean, and he is fair, tall, totally different build.

Although, I thought babies in general were supposed to be fairly similar in proportion? All with a button nose to help them be able to breast feed, average baby weight probably is similar accross various races and whatever body type, height, and build the parents have. I really don’t know much about it.

What would be great is to be able to grow these babies outside the mother. Less traumatic for everyone. But, then I guess that would increase the risk of the very evolutionary problems you elude to here.

@Sunny2 That was another funny thing I remember pointing out (or being pointed out too) some time ago. Someone asked here on Fluther if mankind would survive to see the end of our planet. Unless we destroy it in the next several thousand years, no… since we will evolve into something so completely different from what we are now well before our planet is destroyed by natural means.

First let me point out that the situation you describe—maternal or fetal death due to a child with a large head being born to a woman with a small pelvis—is unfortunately still a reality in many parts of the world. Childbirth continues to be extremely dangerous for women in third world countries.

Largely because of that issue, I would consider it disastrous if somehow we evolved so that natural childbirth became necessarily fatal.

Also, I think it is important to remember that a C-section is not an easier version of childbirth. It is a major abdominal surgery that carries with it all the risks of any other kind of surgery.

Finally, in order for the Large Head mutation to become fixed in the population, we would either need to be selecting for it at a very high rate or we would have to see some kind of massive extinction take place first. Evolution is a stochastic process; there is an equal likelihood of a Large Head and a Small Head gene mutation but no reason for either to become fixed in the population unless some kind of bottleneck situation occurred. Our population is too large for ordinary genetic drift to cause this kind of situation to happen.

@nikipedia Evolution seems to already be trending towards us having larger heads. As you pointed out death-during-childbirth is still a huge problem in the developing world. It used to be a huge problem here even. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s something like close to half of all childbirths ended with the child’s death.

It could simply be that having a larger head is dominant to having a smaller one. I don’t know the specifics behind it because I’ve not studied it at end… But scientists, respected scientists who I assume have studied this at end… are legitimately concerned we could see this outcome within several generations (a few hundred years).

@tedd Maternal and fetal death during childbirth happens for all sorts of reasons. Pregnancy, labor and birth is a dangerous business. Big heads probably is not at the top of the list for risks I am betting.

@JLeslie I dunno how high on the list they are, but I know it was/is a major cause. Even at a tiny percentage of the overall births, it would only take a couple generations to be a huge chunk of the population.

@tedd I thought the shoulders were the toughest part? I never gave birth to a baby, just going by what I have heard. I’ve watched babies being born, and for some reason I can’t remember if the biggest hurdle is the head or shoulders.

I find it difficult to accept that the evolution of heads too large and pelvises too small could take place “within the next few generations.” Looking at human evolution, I’d say that there has been little change in 10,000 years, and most of that is likely due to dietary and behavioral aspects. For example, the increase in the average height of Japanese people in the last fifty years or so has been linked to a change in their dietary habits. The increase in obesity in Americans seems solely due to a diet of processed foods, reduced demand for physical activity in employment, and access to transportation.

@tedd For some reason I think bleeding is the biggest cause of maternal death? I could be wrong. I’d have to research it.

@Bill1939 That was my thought, but it seems as though we’re already on the cusp of that evolutionary change. Children with large heads have been dying in birth for the last 10,000 years. Species make major evolutionary changes well before they’re useful quite frequently. For example birds… they developed feathers something like 3 million years before any of them flew. That means for 3 million years there were these bird-like creatures with totally useless feathers walking around.

And obesity in Americans may actually help us avoid this outcome, as obesity generally leads to an increased pelvis size.

@JLeslie Again I’ve not read it at end so I’m not positive on what kills the most mothers or children during childbirth. I simply know that head/pelvis issues were/are a major cause.

I don’t think it will happen.

Neither. It is what it is. Grab the obsidian knife and go.
Here is something interesting though: If the mother is pregnant during a famine and the child is thus underdeveloped when born and has a smaller pelvis, the child’s child will have a smaller head, because gene expression is affected by the famine environment. If you can fake this environment, you can make babies have smaller heads.

tedd said, ” . . .obesity in Americans may actually help us avoid this outcome, as obesity generally leads to an increased pelvis size.” Sadly, obesity may also cause or contribute to an increase in autism. see http://www.ajc.com/health/autism-may-be-linked-1411105.html

Failure would be that childbirth killed the child and perhaps the mother every time (at minimum the child).... anything above that is success, biologically speaking.

Well, I’d have been one of the women that died in childbirth a century ago, and while I managed to birth to my daughter who weighed 8.4 and had a huge head that never molded I was minutes away from being wheeled off for a C-section. The only thing that brought my girl into the world was sheer force of will along with a suction device and 5 people shouting at me that I could do it. Yep, I did it alright and had 4th degree lacerations to prove it. lol
I cringe to think what might have happened in bygone eras. Whatever it takes to keep a mom and baby alive is alright with me.

@Coloma: Me, too. If it were 100 years ago, my daughter would probably not have come out and we’d both be dead. She came out naturally but only after water was broken almost 48 hours and a lot of medical intervention (no C-section, though).

@jca Seriously, I was giving up, exhausted, heart rate elevated, low oxygen for me and baby, vomiting from the pain, OMG! I’d have had a prairie grave for sure waay back when.

And, these stories are why it is so upsetting to me when people make childbirth sound like the most natural thing in the world, no big deal, women have been pushing babies out for thousands of years. Women die and/or get seriously injured all too often without modern medicine, and even with, and they did back 1,000 years ago too. I get stirred up mostly with the prolifers wanting women to push out a baby and give it away if you don’t want it. Like there is no affect on the health of the mother.

@JLeslie: and that’s after carrying the baby for 9 months!

I get tired of people calling it a ‘miracle’. There are just far too many of us here on the planet for it to be a miracle. It is the rule and not the exception. Over 7 billion currently served and counting. Nothing miraculous about that.

I have a big head. :p

We have so many advances to medicine, the c section, which can save many lives, both baby and mother. This is so needed. for many reasons.

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@JLeslie At the moment, maternal death is more likely caused by losing too much blood, infection, unsafe abortions, and eclampsia. Obstructed birth as the cause of maternal death takes up 8%, and cephalopelvic disproportion (big baby head, small mama pelvis) is only one cause of obstructed birth. Historically, I’ve been given to understand that maternal death was usually caused by losing too much blood or post-birth infection (no antibiotics). Problematically for this discussion, “infant mortality” in historical contexts tends to include infants dying for any reason during infancy (smallpox, infection, got trampled by a horse, malnutrition, etc), not just within a couple days of childbirth. However, it is correct that, pre-antibiotics, 50% of births ended in the death of the mother and/or child (again, roughly – a mother who dies a few weeks later due to infection is included in that statistic).

It kind of sounds like this teacher is promoting some anti-C section as a trend rhetoric. It sounds very doomsdayish. Not just, it could happen, but it’d take a lot of time, and the rest of the world would have to come to industrialized health standards, and there are lots of variables, but rather “OMG PANIC!!!”.

@Aethelflaed She’s pretty level headed, I highly doubt she’s succumbing to a doomsday scenario.

Failure. If it worries you, it would be wiser to select for a better pelvis than to shackle the entire species to something as scarce and fragile as the medical technology infrastructure.

This is silly. There are plenty of women in the world still giving birth the old fashioned way and plenty are still dying or suffering long term effects of such, for example, fistulas. The number of women having C-sections and medically aided births may be growing in some sections of the world, but certainly not the majority.