The Best Places to Be a Mother in Today’s World
On the one hand, it’s the same role no matter where you live. A woman is pregnant, gives birth, and takes care of a baby. On the other hand, where that woman lives makes a huge difference on her experience. While some mothers in the United States are preoccupied with cloth or disposable diapers or designer strollers versus attachment parenting, there are mothers in some countries who face a 1 in 30 chance of dying giving childbirth. Below are some of the best and worst places to be a mother in today’s world.
According to the Save the Children 14th Mothers’ index (http://www.savethechildrenweb.org/SOWM-2013/), an organization that conducts studies based on the mother and child’s health and their educational, economic and political status, the top places to be a mother in 2013 are in Northern European countries. The top ten were Finland, Sweden, and Norway, followed by Iceland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Australia.
The worst places were in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The top ten worst places include the Ivory Coast, Chad, Nigeria, Gambia, the Central African Republic, Niger, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and DR Congo.
The study considers mothers’ wellbeing in regards to lifetime risk of maternal death, the mortality rate of children under the age of five, the number of years the child is likely to spend in formal education, the country’s gross national income per capita, and women’s participation in government.
In the worst countries, 1 in 30 mothers is likely to die from some aspect of their pregnancy and childbirth. 1 out of 5 children in the worst ranked countries will die before they turn five years old. In the best countries, the statistics were jarringly different. In Finland, for example, the child mortality rate is 1/12,200. Reasons for the differences include the availability of quality health care, government programs available to new mothers to be able to spend more time at home with their children and other factors.
The United States ranked 30th and the United Kingdom ranked at #25. Researchers say that the reason the U.S. ranks so low is due to economic inequality. The rate of premature births in the U.S. is one of the highest in the industrialized world. Complications from premature births cause 35% of all newborn fatalities. The United States has one of the highest teen birth rates and teens have a tendency to give birth to premature babies because they have less money, less education and lack the health care advantages that older parents might have.
The good news is that conditions are improving. The study has found that over time, child deaths have seen a decrease of 40% and the death rate for mothers has declined by 50%. Afghanistan, for example, has improved from its ranking as the worst country in the world to be a mother to #145, up 30 notches.
The other good news is that there is medical knowledge to make those numbers improve even more. Experts recommend that regardless of which country a woman lives in, as soon as she discovers she is pregnant she should seek the care of a medical professional, begin taking prenatal vitamins, and make a plan to give birth in a health care facility.
The first 24 hours are the most crucial in the wellbeing of the child and mother. With this in mind, the medical community urges women to give birth in a hospital, where they’ll have access to medical care to handle common issues such as prematurity, complications and infections.
When mothers take care of themselves and seek medical care regularly during and after their pregnancy, they and their newborns are more likely to overcome any complications that arise.