Posted on 09/23/2007 9:09:48 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
Having a large number of children is bad for parents' health - particularly that of mothers, a study suggests. US researchers looked at 21,000 couples living in Utah between 1860 and 1985, who bore a total of 174,000 children.
It was found the more children couples had, the worse their health and the more likely they were to die early.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science study is historical, but the experts say it helps explain both the menopause and modern family planning.
In other species, the high physical costs of bearing and raising offspring explain why having as many offspring as possible is not ideal - even though it might appear to be the most successful way of continuing the species' existence.
Research had not concluded whether or not the same was true for human reproduction.
Physical costs
The researchers, from the University of Utah, analysed nineteenth century data from the Utah Population Database.
They found that the couples had an average of eight children each, but family size ranged from one to 14 or more children.
The data showed that the more children a couple produced, the higher their risk of early death.
The situation was worst for women, because they were affected by the physical costs of bearing the children.
Fathers' mortality risk increased the more children they had, but never exceeded that of mothers.
The team looked at deaths after the last child was born and found mothers were also more likely than fathers to die after the last child was born.
They found 1,414 women died within a year of the last child's birth, and another 988 by the time the child was five.
In comparison, 613 men died in the first year after their last child was born, with another 1,083 dying within five years.
And the larger the family, the more likely children were to die before the age of 18, particularly if they were among the youngest.
Reproductive control
The team, led by Dr Dustin Penn and Dr Ken Smith, say the findings do shed light on human reproduction which are still relevant today.
Humans are one of the few species where the female goes through a menopause which ends her reproductive years.
The researchers say: "Menopause appears to allow mothers to live longer and rear more offspring to adulthood, and this unusual life history probably evolved in our species because, as we found, offspring so extremely depend on their mother's survival."
They add the findings also suggest why women now tend to have fewer children.
"If women have generally incurred greater fitness costs of reproduction, this could explain why they generally prefer fewer offspring than their husbands and reduce their fertility when they obtain more reproductive autonomy."
Generally speaking, every mother in the history of the human race has died after her last child was born.
Typical, although slightly dated, anti-birth idiocy from the MSM.
Let the liberal, pro-abort, sodomites take this as their “gospel” and act accordingly.
Jagger and Richards wrote of the perils. Hence, Mothers Little Helper.
In doing genealogy, I've noticed that frequently the last child was the last because the mother died either in childbirth or because of complications from childbirth.
A friend of my parents bore 17 children. I just found her on the SSDI, she lived to be 86.
Hey media..........like the 20/20 show on this very topic, your article falls under the catagory of “NOYB”!
My thoughts exactly; my great grandmother who had eleven children died in her late eighties.
Before the development of modern medicine, average life expectancy was less. Two of the major factors were the deaths of infants in their first few years, and the deaths of mothers in childbirth.
For the most part, those two causes of death have been solved.
Therefore, the life expectancy of mothers on the frontier in the nineteenth century doesn’t say too much about the life expectancy of mothers today.
Today the health problems tend to be different: for instance, more STDs, more abortion-related cancers, and the like. There is some risk with pregnancy, but there is also some risk driving to the corner store. Life involves risks.
There is, of course, a clear political purpose here: to scare women into having fewer babies. You can be sure they will not mention those other risks associated with birth control pills or abortion.
I didn’t the article was anti-birth. Some people aren’t even fit for having to raise one child, let alone twelve.
If this study goes back to 1860, when infant mortality was common, when antibiotics were unknown, indoor plumbing was rare, sanitation unknown, and the average lifespan several decades less than today, doesn’t that kind of skew the results?
A study dating from, say, 1973, might make more sense, but the results wouldn’t be what the “researchers” desired.
I agree, with all of your post. I come from a very large family, and my Mom is 75, healthy, still working and still going on Medical Missions, twice a year.
The media is helping destroy the family, they REALLY want to destroy large families.
Large families necessarily mean you are older - and hence closer to life expectancy - when your last child is born. DUH
Life expectancies, until recently, meant that women rarely lived to menopause, so it can hardly be related to some sort of survival mechanism.
... one could go on, but the total lack of intelligence this sort of article exemplifies only gives me hope that "investigators" and "reporters" such as those responsible for this article have little hope for survival as a sub-species themselves
That’s exactly right. The changes that occurred between 1860 an 1985 make the entire “study” irrelevant for coming to any conclusions abut the danger of childbirth.
Usual BS.
Yet another article that confuses correlation with causation. One could also argue that wealthier people in the US tend to have fewer children and also have better health care, and better health care leads to longer lives.
“That’s exactly right. The changes that occurred between 1860 an 1985 make the entire “study” irrelevant for coming to any conclusions abut the danger of childbirth.”
Exactly! For one thing, women in the 19th century didn’t get vitamin supplements. Calcium deficiency ate cumulatively into the bones of mothers with each succeeding pregnancy.
There’s much better care given now regards nutrition.
Of course, replacing the classical leftist worldview of amoral hedonism with something other than today's fashionable pseudo-religious self-loathing 'deep ecology' would also help - the nihilistic neo-Malthusian ecofreak anti-human libtards should try it sometime. The themes of anti-civilization, militant resistance to growth of humanity, and tepid support of extinction of the human race (except they wish to enjoy long pleasurable lives), however, seem to be a constant within certain political realms, so I won't hold my breath (though I invite them to hold theirs).
And I'll echo the sentiments of others in this thread, and hope that those espousing these anti-growth notions decide to leave their own lives barren of children, eliminate their own genes from the future, and, if we are successful in eliminating the leftist stranglehold on the media and education empires, their sick memes as well. I'm more than willing to oblige them in voluntarily removing their footprint from future generations.
My grandmother gave birth to 9 kids - all at home sans doctor. She lived to be 97!!
So much for this article.
Last week, wifey and I were chatting with my mother’s live-in caregiver. Her grandmother had 17 kids and is (not was..is) 100 years old.
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