Musk claims birth by C-section leads to bigger brains - but as he constantly proves its not size that matter but intelligence

[IwantToRetire]

By the way I really dont care about the total rubbish he posts, and do feel the media gives him much too much coverage.

But this one is just hilarious. But then Trump has appointed a covid denier to be Health Secretary, so why not a fantasist to cut waste as the head of the* *Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

I cant wait to see what bonkers method he will put in place.

Maybe just fire everybody and say they were a waste.

(Forgot to add link) https://vajenda.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-brain-size-birth-and

The logic is basically sound that removing one constraint to maximum infant head size by having CS available where necessary might lead to gradual increase in average infant head size.

But Jen is right that the changes found in this paper in adults are far far more likely to relate to social factors like childhood nutrition and education.

And more to the point in FWR, EM has a long history of thinking that it's important for "the right" women to have more babies, regardless of what they or "the wrong" women actually want, and this comment whiffs of a similar Handmaid's Tale line of thought.

I used to think that Musk was just misunderstood but he’s gradually outed himself as being a genuinely arrogant twat.

I am beginning to align myself with this

Not that I ever paid much attention to him.

It doesn't "wind me up", but it does concern me that this may represent a move further towards a 'women as gestational incubators' position. That natural pregnancy and birth are outdated anomalies to be replaced by factory like gestational processes.

Vaginal birth provides the newborn with an environment in which the immune system is boosted. Studies show that children born by caesarian have weaker immune systems:

Exposure to beneficial bacteria
During vaginal birth, a baby is exposed to beneficial bacteria from the mother's birth canal. This bacteria helps build the baby's immune system and coats the baby's skin, which prevents harmful bacteria from growing.

Higher levels of protective antibodies
Babies born vaginally produce double the amount of protective antibodies after childhood vaccines compared to babies born by C-section.

Development of immune system
The composition of the maternal microbiota that is transmitted during vaginal birth plays a role in the development of the baby's immune system.

Reduced risk of conditions
Babies born vaginally may have a lower risk of developing asthma, food allergies, and lactose intolerance.

Babies born by C-section may have an impaired immune system later in life because they don't have the same exposure to maternal bacteria.

I'm aligning myself with Jess Phillips who suggested Elon Musk should stick to what he knows and 'crack on with getting to Mars'😄

We all have our strengths 😃

Great points @Shortshriftandlethal

He's being a bit hypocritical tbh as he's been very clear about the issues of gender ideology and messing with hormones and bodies.

The points you make are very important.

I do say this as someone who had two c sections, first medically, second, he wasn't coming out naturally and that was the deadline. It was very healing actually. First experience was awful,

Yes this. He was making a throwaway comment about human evolution. People need to calm themselves

I quite like him.
He says some absolute tosh, but we don’t need to take him seriously. I’m not convinced he always takes himself seriously, he’s fairly mercurial.

DS2 had the most enormous cranial ridges at birth. He would definitely have had a bigger head had I had a c section. By the six week check he was off the charts and had to have extra monitoring!

Now I’m thinking of that awful twilight birthing business, where they drugged women to forget the pain. Eurgh.

I quite like him.
He says some absolute tosh, but we don’t need to take him seriously. I’m not convinced he always takes himself seriously, he’s fairly mercurial.

I agree. His posts are mostly pretty mundane by X, or even MN, standards. If he didn’t own X people wouldn’t bat an eye at them. But a lot of people dislike him because they have been told to, including by TRAs. They hate the fact he has stopped them controlling women’s speech with regard to trans activism, or that he supports Trump, despite America supposedly being a free democracy, and that he didn’t restrict republican posts like Meta. There has certainly been weaponisation of advertisers in the same way MN advertises have been targeted in the past by misnamed organisations like ‘Hope not Hate’ spreading their hatred.

I liked The Spectator’s response to ‘pressure via advertiser’

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spectator-the-co-op-and-cancel-culture-a-cautionary-tale/

All that is great until you are due to pass a 9 pound baby with a huge square head through your pelvis. Funny how microbes coating the baby's skin or a hypothetical increase in asthma risk suddenly becomes the least of your worries when you're looking at the possibility of the baby getting stuck, dying, or suffering a birth injury with lifelong consequences.

My point relates more to the general feeling amongst some elements that natural birth is a bad or retrograde thing, and that maybe babies should simply be incubated in 'gestational carriers' then safely delivered from them.

(I have also given birth a few times myself, you know......)

But it also goes the other way with ‘freebirthing’ and advocates against any medical intervention. Giving birth is still one of the most dangerous things a woman can do and before medical intervention was a leading cause of death. It still is a leading cause of death and disability in countries where good midwifery/obstetric care is not available. Every year between 50,000 and 100,000 women develop obstetric fistulas from obstructed labour. These life changing injuries can lead to a life of exclusion from society and poverty.

I'm not attempting to get into a discussion about the relative merits and de-merits of natural birth.......my point was about the movement that is beginning to suggest that pregnancy and birth are oppressive for women, and that women should be liberated by developing a 'gestational' aproach to pregnancy - in which the woman is effectively reduced to a birthing machine and and the child a product ( commercial surrogacy).

Pregnancy and birth ARE oppressive for women - it leads to their disability and death! The whole point about commercial surrogacy is it ignores the oppression of women caused by pregnancy and birth.

Do you have anything to back that up? Interested as I have an abnormally large head and am on a waiting list for ASD assessment. I have to wear mens XXL hats and can struggle to get tops over my head as the neckline can be too small.

In the basics, Musk is right, in that historically babies with big heads would die at birth (because they couldn't pass through the birth canal) but now they survive, and presumably go on to give birth to (or father) their own big-headed babies. But wouldn't it take quite a long time for this to make any kind of meaningful difference?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by meaningful difference? It wouldn’t take many generations to increase CS rate a bit. But as good obstetric care/availability of CS is also associated with better nutrition it would be very hard to separate the impact of nutrition on IQ or even baby birth size.

He lost a baby. Understandably, he obviously researched pregnancy and birth to help make sense of it all.

I wonder if headsize could be linked to nutrition and environment like height? If large headedness is genetic, and dangerous for both mother and baby, surely it would have it an evolutionary brick wall and no one would have the genes? Pelvis sizes is a factor, too, i suppose.

You can only speak for yourself. Most women do not feel oppressed by pregnancy, birth or motherhood....they are simply inevitable processes and parts of being female. Maybe you see simply being female as a oppressive too?

Lots of women enjoy being pregnant.

Anyway...this is going off topic a bit. Elon Musk was trying to suggest that human evolution would be improved by eliminating the birth process...and i see that persepctive that as linked to recent concepts around transhumanism.....and using the bodies of brain dead women as incubators, for example. A very technocratic and inhuman approach to human life.

he wasn't trying anything really. it was a remark under tweet of some other guy who tweeted statistics that "newer generations have bigger brains". musk started with "there are certainly other factors at play" so all other factors mentioned, like nutrition, are covered.

WeCantGoOverIt His posts are mostly pretty mundane by X, or even MN, standards. If he didn’t own X people wouldn’t bat an eye at them.

How would you rate his post in which he calls Jess Phillips - an elected member of the UK Parliament and a minister in the UK Government, who every International Women's Day commemorates victims of femicide by reading out In Parliament a list of all the women killed in the UK that year - a "rape genocide apologist"? Who should be jailed?

Whatever one thinks of Jess Phillips, calling for the jailing of any woman, any feminist, any democratically-elected minister because they are a "rape genocide apologist" is beyond 'Oh that's just Elon being Elon, people just hate him for being in favour of free speech/owning X/being Trump's chum'.

I'm not a UK subject, so it's not one of my democratically-elected representatives or member of my government he has called a "rape genocide apologist", but if it was, I'd be furious and would have lost any shred of good will towards Elon Musk I might have had before he started launching scurrilous attacks on other people's elected representatives.

Needless to I certainly won't be paying much attention to his opinions on obstetrics. Crack on with getting yourself and your large brain to Mars, Elon!

If the question is, should musk learn not to call nasty scurrilous names when he’s frustrated- Yess! Yes he absolutely should!

If it’s should we consider the unexpected consequences of medical intervention, then yes again.

Should we be able to discuss disgusting ideas like using brain dead women as surrogates? Yes again. We have to make wild suggestions, discuss whether they are practical or ethical, and make decisions as a society.

We are beyond punishing people for heresy.

You can only speak for yourself. Most women do not feel oppressed by pregnancy, birth or motherhood....they are simply inevitable processes and parts of being female. Maybe you see simply being female as an oppressive too?

Makes you wonder why feminism even exists?