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Contraception is not improvement in health. Around 1800's women used to have atleast 10 children. Women now cannot even imagine having 10 children. Most of them

Contraception is not improvement in health. Around 1800's women used to have atleast 10 children. Women now cannot even imagine having 10 children. Most of them will die before giving birth to 10th one.

ommunist 10y ago
Most of them in fact will die before giving birth to the 5th.
epistasis 10y ago
Contraception is a huge improvement in quality of life as well as human freedom. Women in the past would very frequently die in childbirth. Do you have data to show that childbirth is as dangerous as it was in the path? Or that it was safer in the past? (That would be truly shocking and counterintuitive.)
- epistasis 10y ago
  To answer some of my own questions, child birth is becoming tremendously safer: Year Deaths per 1000 live births ------------ ---------------------------- 1700 to 1750 10.5 (British [1]) 1750 to 1800 7.5 (British [1]) 1800 to 1850 5.0 (British [1]) 1990 3.8 (Global [2]) 2013 2.0 (Global [2]) 2013 <0.09 (UK [3]) 2013 <0.28 (US [4]) Though I can't find a source, some articles claim a 1% maternal mortality rate in the 1600s! [5] From that same Slate article, child birth is still one of the most dangerous things for young women, despite it being far safer than ever in the past. This means that contraception is actually a health benefit. It makes it much safer to be a young woman. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ [2] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT [3] http://patient.info/doctor/maternal-mortality http://patient.info/doctor/maternal-mortality [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/maternal-mortality.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/maternal-mortality.... [5] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/death_in_childbirth_doctors_increased_maternal_mortality_in_the_20th_century.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    Why is it surprising that women are really good at giving birth? After all, the genes of the ones that weren't have not been selected for, tens of thousands of years ago. Either way, contraception is pretty orthogonal to the actual mortality rate of women due to child birth.
    - epistasis 10y ago
      It's actually the opposite: Humans are not very good at giving birth. And that is surprising. Child birth is hugely dangerous for humans, and the speculation in the scientific field is that it's an evolutionary interplay between the size of an infant's skull at birth, constraints on hip sizes, and the amount of brain development that can happen as a fetus or as an infant. Tens of thousands of years is pretty short in terms of morphological development of humans. Evolution on time scales shorter than that is limited to extremely simple mutations, usually, such as lactose tolerance by adults (which has arisen multiple times independently in the past 10k years). I do agree that contraception has little impact on maternal mortality during child birth.
- prakashrj 10y ago
  My comment was satirical. I think women should have choice. I believe that improvement in child mortality was because of contraception and not advances made in health. Showing a graph with improvements in child mortality rate and alluding us to believe in the following is wrong. 1. It happened because of living conditions. 2. Healthier diet — made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade. 3. age-old war against infectious disease 4. discovery of the germ theory of disease 5. development of antibiotics and vaccines While I believe that contraception has improved child mortality rate. We should compare child mortality rate of first 2 children over the past 200 years. Child mortality will obviously be high when women have no choice.
  - epistasis 10y ago
    I have no idea what you're trying to say. Even without introducing the twist that your previous comment was "satirical," and therefore that some or all of this comment may be satirical, it's unclear what point you're trying to communicate. If you are saying "child mortality is going down only because women are having fewer children and not because of improvements in healthcare," then that statement is obviously wrong and would appear to be satire in itself. If its satire, I'm not sure what the point is. If it's not satire, then I'm not sure how you're going to convince people without at least a fig leaf of a citation.
    - prakashrj 10y ago
      You understood what I am saying and have also summarized it. "child mortality is going down only because women are having fewer children and not because of improvements in healthcare" There might be improvements in healthcare, antibiotics and vaccinations. But I believe that contraception is a major factor in improving child mortality rate. Obviously I cannot cite anything, as it's my belief. So I started looking for examples to see if I am correct. Looks like my belief is wrong. Despite a higher prevalence of several risk factors for perinatal and infant death among the Amish, neonatal and infant death rates for Geauga Settlement Amish have been very similar to the corresponding rates for white children in rural Ohio and the state as a whole. --Perinatal, Infant, and Child Death Rates among the Old Order Amish
CaptSpify 10y ago
I'm confused. Are you arguing that women should have 10 children without a choice? Why? What benefit does that provide to anyone?
- prakashrj 10y ago
  My comment was satirical. I think women should have choice. I believe that improvement in child mortality was because of contraception and not advances made in health. Showing a graph with improvements in child mortality rate and alluding us to believe that: 1. It happened because of living conditions. 2. Healthier diet — made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade. 3. age-old war against infectious disease 4. discovery of the germ theory of disease 5. development of antibiotics and vaccines While I believe that contraception has improved child mortality rate. We should compare child mortality rate of first 2 children over the past 200 years. Child mortality will obviously be high when women have no choice. I believe that we are being mislead about improvements in health, while in reality people have become weaker, less healthier. There are more diseases now than before. We couldn't really find cure for diseases. Discovery of Antibiotics was helpful for a while. Now bacteria is winning that battle with some superbugs among us.
douche 10y ago
Any rate of reproduction over replacement level is probably irresponsible, at this point, from a global perspective. We could probably stand to reduce the population down by a couple billion. It's also easier to have ten children when you start having them at 15 or sixteen, like my grandmother did, rather than at 30, as many are doing now.
- prakashrj 10y ago
  My comment was satirical. I think women should have choice. I believe that improvement in child mortality was because of contraception and not advances made in health. Showing a graph with improvements in child mortality rate and alluding us to believe in the following is wrong. 1. It happened because of living conditions. 2. Healthier diet — made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade. 3. age-old war against infectious disease 4. discovery of the germ theory of disease 5. development of antibiotics and vaccines While I believe that contraception has improved child mortality rate. We should compare child mortality rate of first 2 children over the past 200 years. Child mortality will obviously be high when women have no choice.
ctdonath 10y ago
A friend has 15. She's in better health than most everyone I know.

ommunist 10y ago

Most of them in fact will die before giving birth to the 5th.

epistasis 10y ago

Contraception is a huge improvement in quality of life as well as human freedom. Women in the past would very frequently die in childbirth. Do you have data to show that childbirth is as dangerous as it was in the path? Or that it was safer in the past? (That would be truly shocking and counterintuitive.)

epistasis 10y ago
To answer some of my own questions, child birth is becoming tremendously safer: Year Deaths per 1000 live births ------------ ---------------------------- 1700 to 1750 10.5 (British [1]) 1750 to 1800 7.5 (British [1]) 1800 to 1850 5.0 (British [1]) 1990 3.8 (Global [2]) 2013 2.0 (Global [2]) 2013 <0.09 (UK [3]) 2013 <0.28 (US [4]) Though I can't find a source, some articles claim a 1% maternal mortality rate in the 1600s! [5] From that same Slate article, child birth is still one of the most dangerous things for young women, despite it being far safer than ever in the past. This means that contraception is actually a health benefit. It makes it much safer to be a young woman. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ [2] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT [3] http://patient.info/doctor/maternal-mortality http://patient.info/doctor/maternal-mortality [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/maternal-mortality.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/maternal-mortality.... [5] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/death_in_childbirth_doctors_increased_maternal_mortality_in_the_20th_century.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Why is it surprising that women are really good at giving birth? After all, the genes of the ones that weren't have not been selected for, tens of thousands of years ago. Either way, contraception is pretty orthogonal to the actual mortality rate of women due to child birth.
  - epistasis 10y ago
    It's actually the opposite: Humans are not very good at giving birth. And that is surprising. Child birth is hugely dangerous for humans, and the speculation in the scientific field is that it's an evolutionary interplay between the size of an infant's skull at birth, constraints on hip sizes, and the amount of brain development that can happen as a fetus or as an infant. Tens of thousands of years is pretty short in terms of morphological development of humans. Evolution on time scales shorter than that is limited to extremely simple mutations, usually, such as lactose tolerance by adults (which has arisen multiple times independently in the past 10k years). I do agree that contraception has little impact on maternal mortality during child birth.
prakashrj 10y ago
My comment was satirical. I think women should have choice. I believe that improvement in child mortality was because of contraception and not advances made in health. Showing a graph with improvements in child mortality rate and alluding us to believe in the following is wrong. 1. It happened because of living conditions. 2. Healthier diet — made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade. 3. age-old war against infectious disease 4. discovery of the germ theory of disease 5. development of antibiotics and vaccines While I believe that contraception has improved child mortality rate. We should compare child mortality rate of first 2 children over the past 200 years. Child mortality will obviously be high when women have no choice.
- epistasis 10y ago
  I have no idea what you're trying to say. Even without introducing the twist that your previous comment was "satirical," and therefore that some or all of this comment may be satirical, it's unclear what point you're trying to communicate. If you are saying "child mortality is going down only because women are having fewer children and not because of improvements in healthcare," then that statement is obviously wrong and would appear to be satire in itself. If its satire, I'm not sure what the point is. If it's not satire, then I'm not sure how you're going to convince people without at least a fig leaf of a citation.
  - prakashrj 10y ago
    You understood what I am saying and have also summarized it. "child mortality is going down only because women are having fewer children and not because of improvements in healthcare" There might be improvements in healthcare, antibiotics and vaccinations. But I believe that contraception is a major factor in improving child mortality rate. Obviously I cannot cite anything, as it's my belief. So I started looking for examples to see if I am correct. Looks like my belief is wrong. Despite a higher prevalence of several risk factors for perinatal and infant death among the Amish, neonatal and infant death rates for Geauga Settlement Amish have been very similar to the corresponding rates for white children in rural Ohio and the state as a whole. --Perinatal, Infant, and Child Death Rates among the Old Order Amish

CaptSpify 10y ago

I'm confused. Are you arguing that women should have 10 children without a choice? Why? What benefit does that provide to anyone?

prakashrj 10y ago
My comment was satirical. I think women should have choice. I believe that improvement in child mortality was because of contraception and not advances made in health. Showing a graph with improvements in child mortality rate and alluding us to believe that: 1. It happened because of living conditions. 2. Healthier diet — made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade. 3. age-old war against infectious disease 4. discovery of the germ theory of disease 5. development of antibiotics and vaccines While I believe that contraception has improved child mortality rate. We should compare child mortality rate of first 2 children over the past 200 years. Child mortality will obviously be high when women have no choice. I believe that we are being mislead about improvements in health, while in reality people have become weaker, less healthier. There are more diseases now than before. We couldn't really find cure for diseases. Discovery of Antibiotics was helpful for a while. Now bacteria is winning that battle with some superbugs among us.

douche 10y ago

Any rate of reproduction over replacement level is probably irresponsible, at this point, from a global perspective. We could probably stand to reduce the population down by a couple billion. It's also easier to have ten children when you start having them at 15 or sixteen, like my grandmother did, rather than at 30, as many are doing now.

prakashrj 10y ago
My comment was satirical. I think women should have choice. I believe that improvement in child mortality was because of contraception and not advances made in health. Showing a graph with improvements in child mortality rate and alluding us to believe in the following is wrong. 1. It happened because of living conditions. 2. Healthier diet — made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade. 3. age-old war against infectious disease 4. discovery of the germ theory of disease 5. development of antibiotics and vaccines While I believe that contraception has improved child mortality rate. We should compare child mortality rate of first 2 children over the past 200 years. Child mortality will obviously be high when women have no choice.

ctdonath 10y ago

A friend has 15. She's in better health than most everyone I know.