Links to Consider, 10/26

Tove K on induced childbirth; Rob Henderson on the male role; James Orr on conservatism; Jillian Snider on crime and mental illness

Tove K writes,

"The existing evidence suggests that most complications of pregnancy are minimized at about 39 weeks of gestation", …Children die the least, get the least breathing problems and emergency c-sections are the fewest. Longer-term studies haven't managed to pin-point a single ideal week to be born. But they indicate that being born too early or too late is associated with increases in behavioral problems, being born too early was associated with lower income and being born too late with higher rates of disability.

If week 39 is optimal, but the median week of birth is slightly after week 40, the question is

Why would women have evolved to give birth too late?

I can think of one plausible explanation: The environment has changed compared to when humans evolved. What if most babies in history were actually born on an optimal date?

This reminds me of when my first grandson was born. Around 8 months into my daughter’s pregnancy, her obstetrician started advising her to be induced. The obstetrician said that the low weight of the fetus might indicate that the fetus was not thriving. My wife and I looked into the issue, and it turns out that estimating fetal weight in utero is not at all reliable. Given that there was no other evidence that the baby was not thriving, we advised our daughter to wait. She waited a couple more weeks, and then she was induced.

These days, many women are advised to have their babies early. I formed this hypothesis:

With modern postnatal care, once a pregnancy reaches 8 months obstetricians are more confident that they can take care of a baby outside the womb than inside. After 8 months, they know that a baby’s problems can be treated much more reliably in the NICU than inside the mother.

Until recently, being outside the womb was risky for a newborn. A longer pregnancy was more likely to result in a surviving baby. But now we take such good care of newborns that the optimum length of a pregnancy may be a few weeks earlier than what evolution designed.

Rob Henderson writes,

In his cross-cultural research, the psychologist Martin J. Seager has found 3 consistent requirements to achieve the status of manhood in various societies around the world.

First, the individual must be a fighter and a winner.

Second, he must be a provider and protector.

And third, he must maintain mastery and control of himself at all times.

Henderson goes on to argue that whether males behave constructively or destructively depends on how society presents for them opportunities to achieve.

In contemporary western societies, parents, teachers, coaches, local community leaders, and other high-status figures used to raise boys to become men, imparting lessons about personal responsibility, hard work, relationships, and obligations. Today, in the absence of such guidance, many young boys are being raised by viral TikTok influencers peddling diluted and ungrounded conceptions of masculinity.    

High-status individuals have a societal responsibility to guide young men toward constructive avenues for status acquisition.

James Orr writes,

No champion of conservatism is ever comfortable defining it, because to define conservatism is to put oneself in tension with it.  There is not nor could there ever be such a thing as a Little Blue Book, for it is the perennial predicament of the conservative to be so alive to the human horror justified by the clinical certainties of political creeds that he will always feel unease at any invitation to write down one of his own. 

He then goes on try to define the essence of conservatism as

the notion of order.  On this view, the real foe of conservatism is neither the liberal nor the socialist but rather the anarchist and the libertarian.

I think he should have stuck with his first paragraph. My libertarian inclination is to believe that progress comes from trial and error, whereas liberals and socialists think that it comes from elite wisdom. Trial and error helps solve the conservative problem of over-using Chesterton’s Fence arguments. It is when libertarians are impatient with trial and error and propose radical, utopian ideas (open borders, legalize all drugs) that they deservedly lose those of us with a conservative bent.

Pointer from Ed West.

Also note that David Friedman’s recent post may be relevant. He says that we get into philosophical and real-world trouble when we think of the rights of “a people” rather than a person. One can read into it utopian libertarian idea that the world should have universal individual rights rather than be organized along ethnonationalist lines. Or perhaps one can read into it an endorsement of colonial rule as generally more peaceful than “self-determination,” which would make it more politically incorrect than conservative ethnonationalism.

Jillian Snider writes,

Every year, millions of individuals with mental illness find themselves behind bars; in fact, 64% of jail inmates, 54% of state prisoners, and 45% of federal prisoners have reported some type of mental-health or substance-use disorder. …Between 21% and 38% of 911 calls are for non-urgent issues related to mental health, substance use, homelessness, and related concerns that could be handled by people other than police. Yet thousands of times a day, police officers are called upon to respond to such situations.

She describes several alternatives, including co-responder teams.

On these teams, a police officer and a mental-health clinician respond to calls involving mental- and behavioral-health issues. Co-responder programs free up police resources, decrease the number of unnecessary arrests, and provide more appropriate care for individuals experiencing mental-health crises.

substacks referenced above:

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Is There a Right of Self Determination?

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Sunday West 42

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What is Conservatism?

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Understanding the Young Male Syndrome

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Are modern children born too late?