Stories abound of women dying in childbirth before the advent of modern hospitals.
And yet, few people realize that women were not dying due to the fact that childbirth is inherently dangerous, but rather because of the living conditions at that time. Poor women were generally underfed and overworked during pregnancy, while wealthy women were often deprived of fresh air and sunshine because brown skin was considered socially unacceptable. Wealthy girls were corsetted from the age of eleven, so that by the time they turned fourteen, their pelvises were literally deformed. Throughout history, normal, healthy women have rarely died in childbirth. In fact, when birth moved from the home to the hospital in the 1920s, the infant and maternal mortality rates actually rose.