The C-section birth may be affecting modern evolution and making female pelvises remain smaller. According to scientists, evolution is still going on. And, this is one of the examples of modern day evolution. Nature may not prefer women having larger pelvises in humans, and C-section deliveries are only helping the cause.
Since humans walk on two feet, larger pelvises may not be a necessity. Scientists often wonder why female pelvises have not gone larger over the years, since giving birth is especially painful for humans. The reason behind the pain of labor in humans is the ratio between the mother's birth canal and the size of the baby's head and shoulders.
In humans, the ratio happens to be extremely close. At times, the dimensions of the baby's head and shoulders go even bigger than the mother's birth canal. That's what makes humans different from other mammals that have a much bigger birth canal in mothers. While labor contractions may be painful for most mammals, it is more painful in humans who need much longer labors than other mammals like apes.
Still, female pelvises in humans have remained relatively smaller in size over the years. This may suggest that evolution is not in favor of humans having larger pelvises. Now, studies suggest that the rise of C-section birth in recent years also affects the mother's pelvis to remain smaller in size. Now, there is apparently a bigger gap between mothers' pelvises and the size of their newborns.
"Women with a very narrow pelvis would not have survived birth 100 years ago," the BBC quoted Philipp Mitteroecker, an assistant professor in the Department of Theoretical Biology at the University of Vienna, as saying. "They do now and pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to their daughters."
According to CBS News, C-section deliveries have a history of hundreds of years. But, it was performed on dead or dying mothers to save the baby. Though the term may have originated from Julius Caesar, there is no evidence to suggest he was a C-section birth himself.
