Abstract

I never set out to prove anyone wrong. What I am about to describe started just over a decade ago when I simply wanted to learn more about what fascinates me most, which is human evolution. Where it goes, I hope, is towards ongoing efforts to improve maternity and childbirth care, particularly when it comes to supporting physiologic birth.As a freshly minted PhD in biological anthropology and a postdoctoral researcher, I had the spark and the freedom to look into the evidence behind a textbook example of natural selection in human evolution: the "obstetrical dilemma". Though the ideas were already floating around in the early days of the field of physical anthropology—like in...