This is unbelievable. The maternal mortality rate for millennials in the US aged 25 to 34 is 230% higher than it was for Gen Xers and 300% higher than it was for baby boomers of the same age
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Your healthcare system sucks. When my mom had me, she and I stayed at the hospital for nearly a week. When I had my daughter, it was 48 hours. Now, women and babies are sent home within a day. There's no chance to really monitor and there's no in home nurse follow up like other places.
Remember though the US is not homogeneous. This is largely an effect from states that restricted abortion, including by attacking the safety net providers of mayernal health, and prioritizing attacking abortion over maternal health generally. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010782421000901
I’m reminded of a conversation with some boomers at a holiday a few years ago in which I mentioned life expectancy was decreasing and they were shocked.
I agree that a direct comparison is difficult to make accurately, due to changes in the reporting demographics of race, age, & C-section frequency, but it’s still an alarming trend, & seems to jump in a single generation.
The demo stats between gen x & millennials can’t be that different, can they?
That's incredibly fucked up, but the report does say "Based on a detailed analysis of the new reporting standards, it is likely that maternal mortality rates for earlier generations were much higher than reported, so direct comparison is challenging."
Would be interested to see side by side mortality rate of women cares for by of midwives vs OB’s. I know OB’s do caesarians way more often than strictly necessary.
It’s very believable—the US has had some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, worsening every year even before abortion bans and the fall of Roe. Much of that was borne by people of color, but not all, and it far outstripped EU.
People just don’t know, or don’t want to.
White supremacy sure has crawled out from under its rock these days, but is the patriarchy stronger? This seems to track with general inequality and lack of opportunity for younger, less generationally wealthy people
is there a way to measure patriarchy's strength? seems more appropriate to see how it changes over time to adjust and remain in control. can't separate patriarchy from white supremacy and capitalism, anyway
I agree they're bound together and I guess any evidence I could give of the patriarchy weakening would be annectdotal appeals to progressiveness in pop culture, but if not how could there be a market for that whole fascist trad wife influencer nonsense?
Absolutely the contrast to longer-ago generations is due to changes in reporting and recording (who was recording the deaths of minority farmworkers and unattended/underattended births) but the comparison for the last few decades is solid
I mean, I doubt my preeclampsia would've been caught had I been in the US given that there are so few prenatal appts in this country and it was thanks to a checkup urine sample and several months of BP monitoring that they were able to diagnose and hospitalize me. Fortunately I was in Japan.
Should really be age-adjusted. 25-34 is a huge range (it's most of the fertility window), and we know that a much higher % of Millennial women give birth at the high end than past gens. So is it an age or healthcare effect? Along w/changing reporting standards, it's difficult to draw any conclusions
Does it really matter though? If larger circumstances have led to most pregnant people being older, the risks for “an average pregnancy” are still what’s being assessed.
It matters when you go on to fix the problem, but that’s not the stage we’re in here.
Agree, but my point is that the report tries to define a problem—that it’s more dangerous to be pregnant at the *same age* than it was in the past—but does not in fact compare people at the same age to each other. It’s already known that mothers are older now and pregnancy more dangerous as a result
Women in previous generations started having kids earlier, but many continued having kids into their 40s. Also, 34 is more than a decade short of the average start of menopause, and many of the older pregnancies you are talking about are women in their early 40s, aka well past the age of 34.
Right, they were. That’s not what I’m talking about. When are most births happening, in any generation, has been a fairly fixed window (25-34), but there has been a lot of movement by generation within that window. I’m not deliberating over how long women can give birth
Comments
nutritional value in foods have declined over the years
pollution (microplastics in human hearts) & keep researching.
"Black maternal mortality Is more than twice the national average.. disparities transcend socioeconomic factors such as education level and income"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1076029620962853
The demo stats between gen x & millennials can’t be that different, can they?
People just don’t know, or don’t want to.
IT IS A MYSTERY
It matters when you go on to fix the problem, but that’s not the stage we’re in here.
Then go watch this show on Hulu, from ABC Nightline, called “On The Brink”.
Because HOLY SHIT what some states are doing to females, is fucking criminal.
Uh, I'll see myself out.