Friday, May 6, 2011

Why me and my unborn son would be better off in Croatia.

Every year around mother's day the Save The Children Foundation releases it's "State of the World's Mothers" complete with rankings as to where mothers and children are better off. Every year I skim the list and shake my head that the United States ranks so low among developed countries. I even find myself making excuses like "Our infant mortality is so high because we save so many premies." and "Our maternity leave numbers are so skewed because we have so many more women that work." But this year I really looked at where the numbers came from and what actually went into the rankings.
I was shocked!

I'll compare us to Croatia for an example.
The US ranked 31st. Croatia ranked27th.
I'm not even going to compare us to the top ten countries because it's just not pretty. It makes a strong case for government run health systems.... but I'm not going there today.

I am 38+ weeks pregnant.




  • Here in the United States I have a 1:2,100 chance of dying when I give birth in the next few weeks. In Croatia I would have a 1:5,200 chance. Holy %^&* that makes me more than twice as likely to leave my husband a widower with two kids. Can I still get a plane ticket???


  • If I were Croatian I would have been on maternity leave for 30 days already instead of slogging though half days of back pain and swollen feet. And I would be expected to take a full year off after I delivered to care for my child. YES PAID!!!


  • And how could I complain that maybe it's because more of the US work force is made p of women than in Croatia when 24% of their government seats are held by women when here it's 17%. Oh and a woman in Croatia makes 67% of what a man in the same job does. Which sounds absolutely shitty until you compare it to the US where I make 62% of what a male with my job makes. On that note I have to stick my middle finger up to the world when I see that even Norway which ranked #1 that number is only 77%.


  • But whatever, as long as I have a healthy baby right? Well the infant mortality rate in Croatia is 5:1000 live born births. Here in the US it's 8:1000.


  • On the flip side if my baby were a girl her life expectancy here in the US would be 82 as opposed to 80 in Croatia. And she would expect 17 years of formal schooling here and 14 in Croatia. Though she would be just as likely to enroll in secondary school here as there (94%)


Don't get me wrong, there are a lot harder places in the world to raise children. I've seen several of them up close and I would never have the strength to walk in those women's shoes (or lack there of). But if Malawi can cut it's child mortality IN HALF in ten years, think of what we could do if we put our minds too it!



Bottom line is that we have a lot of work to do as a nation but the first thing we have to do is pull our heads out of our asses and realize that things can be better for both women and children so that maybe by the time Adeline is ready to have children she is better off than the women in Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal, Ireland, Slovenia, Estonia, Greece, Canada, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Latvia, Austria, Croatia, Japan, Poland and Slovakia. ALL of which out ranked us this year.



But don't take it from me, read it yourself....



http://www.savethechildren.org/



1 comment:

Susan Grant said...

Just read your post--Happy Mother's Day. I sincerely hope your generation figures out why people in this country vote against their own interests. Why shouldn't the richest country in the world have universal health care?? Why are people so afraid of something that would benefit everyone?? Rhetorical questions but ones that have been puzzling me and worrying me about our future--yours, Adeline, Buddy Duckling et al. I am enjoying the bood you loaned me and hope to return it this weekend when we pick up my new car--YEH!!! If you are not in labor, do you want to go to lunch--our treat?? Let me know.