To find the BBC article on research on c sections and evolution a bit off?

[bummymummy77]

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I find it a bit off. Yes it's science and cold hard fact but for some reason the tone got to me a bit.

And this is coming from someone who had a home birth and is very anti unnecessary interventions.

I can imagine it making women who've had c sections feeling like shite.

Seemed to me a little like the way it was worded is added to the quiet drip drip of c section stigma.

I mean, we've evolved past having enough body hair to survive in caves and eat raw meat, we treat cancer and intervene medically to save 1000's of lives daily.

At the same time I find it interesting and obviously most research will benefit mankind in some way.

What are other's views on it?

Even the sub heading "The regular use of Caesarean sections is having an impact on human evolution, say scientists" seems off to me. This statement is not about the small amount of one specific condition but saying regular use of c sections.

It is probably the use of this sub-heading that makes the article sound a bit off and judgy, and doesn't have much to do with the research reported in the body of the article. C-sections have become so common at the reported 'nearly 25℅' (about double on 30 years ago) that they might be said to be regularly used. However, it is not these that the research is referring to , but the much smaller number for disproportion, 3℅ in the 1960s and the 3.6% now, without which the baby could not possibly be born alive. So there was no reason to mention 25℅ or regularly used; it isn't relevant.

I really don't understand why anyone would take this personally or feel in any way criticised for not dying during childbirth!
It's just a piece of research. It's useful to study how we evolve. The article didn't indicate that there was anything wrong with modern medical intervention. It's a simple observation of facts.

I wouldn't have said it was "evolution" in its conventional sense. It's more like unnatural selection.
Natural or unnatural - it's ALL evolution.

Ah Lume I hadn't thought of that.

I really do think the high intervention rate where I live may be why I do know so many women who feel crappy regarding their c sections. My state's section rate is at almost 40% now.

I hope if I felt badly about something that had happened in my life they'd care and empathise even if they hadn't gone through it themselves.

This article is not advocating vaginal birth over caesarean. It's saying that babies who otherwise would have died are surviving to pass on their genes. That means there are likely to be more women with smaller pelvises than there "naturally" should be because they would die during childbirth.

This is nothing to do with natural birth activists or people being pro caesarean. It's a totally neutral observation.

Flipping heck I get that!

I find the research interesting. There's something in the delivery in find lacking.

"this is coming from someone who had a home birth and is very anti unnecessary interventions."

Whereas the rest of us are completely FOR unnecessary interventions...

I've also had a home birth, OP, and an emergency section (and a few other deliveries in between). I found the article very interesting and not at all offensive. That said, while I don't disbelieve other women who say that they have felt otherwise, I've not felt at all judged or stigmatised for having a section.

Without a section for the birth of my youngest, both he and I would have died. That's just a fact. I had a section. We didn't. Phew!

Natural selection means that those women who would also have died now happily survive to pass on their genes. This is scientifically interesting and understandably might contribute to a slighter higher rate of sections in the future.

Full paper here if anyone is interested:

www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/11/29/1612410113.full?sid=e7c88e68-191b-4619-894b-4a66d06aebaa

Never quite get why a bodily function is a matter for competion or guilt . the important bit about child rearing is the two decades after birth, not the birth itself.

If modern medicine means we no longer have the 20% or more death in childbirth rate, where is the problem?

It's common sense that the prevalence of the C-section could ultimately have an effect on our evolution as a species. It's unlikely to happen in the short term but over multiple generations it is highly likely it would. Think about it: without the C-section, many women who are unable to give birth normally would die and/or have their baby die. With the C-section, the baby may survive when it normally wouldn't, therefore the mother's deformity may be passed on to the child when previously it would just die.

It's a factual and scientific article. It's not meant to insult people who have had or may need a C-section. Science is about cold, hard facts. If scientists were unable to detach their emotional side from their research into facts they would not be able to discover medicines or make surgical procedures safe in the first place.

I don't see any reason to be offended by this.
It seems pretty obvious that if we medically save people who would otherwise have died, genetic differences that would have died out with them are now going to be passed on.
The report seems to confirm a very small tendency for this to happen in this particular case of difficult births.
If CC was required to potentially save the life of a mother and/or child, that is something to celebrate, and the tiny genetic effect seems a small price to pay.
If CC was a free choice and not due to the mother's physical frame, there will be no genetic effect anyway, since only 'normal' genes will be passed on. No reason at all for concern or criticism.
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The availability of glasses has probably affected the human species. I'm sure Dh and I would have died out ages ago if we didn't have ours.

I had a section and I totally agree with the article - c-sections do allow children and mothers who wouldn't have survived to survive and to go on to breed further.
I think that they have a fairly un-nuanced view of evolution, though - c-sections are as much a product of human evolution as home births are, humans are specifically good at using tools, solving complex problems, working in packs, etc.....and all species use their own highly evolved traits to keep their young alive. Evolution doesn't care about the eventual future of the species, it works on encouraging what saves most babies and mothers to breed right now - like, c-sections.

"If modern medicine means we no longer have the 20% or more death in childbirth rate, where is the problem?"

In the early sixties the maternal mortality rate was 0.02% with a c-section rate of about 3%.

Maternal mortality rates plummeted fastest and furthest with the advent of antibiotics and routine antenatal care.

The end of the antibiotic era will change everything in obstetrics. With a c/s rate of over 30% in some hospitals, it doesn't bear thinking about what will happen when there is a rise in antibiotic resistant infections... :-(

I thought female literacy rates had the greatest impact on maternal mortality?

Would add that in the past obstructed labour wasn't the major cause of maternal mortality. Eclampsia, infection, pulmonary embolism, and haemorrhage were the main causes of death in childbirth.

Countess - as I've said before, where I am has a rate of almost 40% c sections and it's growing every year. So clearly there are many unnecessary interventions here. I think Britain is still largely sensible regarding child birth and maternal welfare over liability.

Mini- it's terrifying to think what's going to happen when more and more resistance creeps in.

I think if we get to a point we aren't able to perform c sections we'll have a lot more to be worrying about sadly.

"The availability of glasses has probably affected the human species"

My dm has always said I'd have been dead a long time ago left to myself. Needed glasses since I was 5 and pretty much blind now. She's a peach that one.

Maybe we wouldn't have so many short sighted people passing on their defective genes if we hadn't found ways of helping prevent them getting run over....
What's with all this being upset about having a Caesarean, or not being able to breastfeed, or whatever, anyway? Some misplaced sense of disappointment that you can no longer count yourself as part of some imagined genetic super race?

I'm a mass of defects, I am. I have my good bits, though.

I'm really short too. That would stop me getting all the delicious berries higher up the trees.

I do have strong nails though, and teeth, good for fighting and killing rodents.

Glad neither I nor DC died during their delivery so not really bothered about the evolutionary side. There are many aspects of modern life that are fucking with evolution so no, this specifically doesn't make me feel shit at all. In fact, though I had planned on a natural birth, nothing about having a c section made me feel bad or a failure at all. It's strange how many people assume that it would.

I thought the article was fine.

I had a section. As did my DM, as did one of my sisters.

All were medically required and none of them related to pelvis size.

However without medical intervention there would have been no need for those sections because Mum would have died as a child.

On the off chance she'd made it through her childhood illness, I would have died through a childhood illness myself without medical help.

I might have squeaked through that I suppose but my DH and I had serious fertility issues so without IVF we'd never have had our children.

What I personally took from the article was that modern medicine is a truly wonderful thing and we should be grateful every day that we have mostly free access to it.

Haven't rtft but it's fucking evolution that's made it hard for us to give birth in the first place!! Big brains - big heads, walking upright - narrower hips.

Well, whatever they say about evolution I'm just bloody grateful for c sections because without them I'd not be here. My mum had 3 and I had 2. We could all not be here.

I didn't find the tone of the reporting problematic at all (R4 Today programme). I've had two caesarean and have often thought this myself, only one of my sections was due to big-headed/shouldered baby who I'm convinced would have been born vaginally if smaller, the other one was an issue with placental veins and presumably if there's a genetic cause for that too then that also may have been passed on when it otherwise wouldn't have been (dc very almost died).

I find it interesting rather than problematic but I don't read the tabloids and can imagine how they would report it. I'm too glad to be alive and have two living children to give the slightest fuck about what anyone else thinks about how I gave birth.