
What a Midwife Wishes People Knew About Her Job - Ultramanoid
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/05/719989630/what-a-midwife-wishes-people-knew-about-her-job
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Causality1
Something I think people should be aware of is how the resurgence of midwifery
in the Western world is a response to our increasing negligence in taking care
of expectant and birthing mothers. In the United States, my sister giving
birth today is almost twice as likely to die in childbirth as her mother was
thirty years ago. A few months ago Ars Technica covered a study on the reasons
why, and it boiled down almost entirely to doctors and nurses neglecting their
patients or even straight-up ignoring them.
[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/why-do-so-many-
moms-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/why-do-so-many-moms-die-and-
suffer-in-the-us-stupid-negligence/)

I would absolutely urge anyone to hire a midwife to attend a hospital
delivery. It's the only way to guarantee at least one professional in that
room cares.

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OneFamousGrouse
This might be true in the US but hardly in the entire "western world". Here in
France you can give birth in a hospital without ever having a doctor
intervening, only midwives, and it is not a new thing.

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Fredej
Yeah, same thing in Denmark. When my girlfriend gave birth, we had 3 midwives
assisting. When she lost what they deemed to be too much blood, they called in
a doctor to take a look. Everything was fine. If she hadn't passed some
specified threshold for bloodloss, we would not have seen a doctor (or a
nurse, come to think of it) at all throughout the birth. Only midwives.

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rich-tea
> It's a matter of fairness. Riskier jobs should have higher salaries.

Interesting argument which I doubt anyone here agrees with. After all, that
would mean builders, miners, street sweepers and the like would be paid the
highest, midwives somewhere in the middle and us right at the bottom.

~~~
gravelc
Not sure who 'us' is; HN readership is pretty diverse. I'm a scientist and
earn roughly the same as a midwife in Australia.

Having said that, my first child nearly died during birth, and having a very
good midwife who knew the signs, made all the right decisions, got the
emergency doctors in at the right time - that service was utterly invaluable.

I'm all for the average midwife being paid somewhat more than me if it leads
to more of these outcomes.

~~~
dang
Maybe the term "riskier job" should include the risks to everyone involved.

~~~
belorn
In which case water treatment employees would be extremely well paid.

~~~
gravelc
Struggling to see the equivalence here.

Midwifes have to make the correct decisions in a stressful situation in an
extremely tight time period (seconds to minutes when it's the business end of
things, so to speak), with limited information (no heartbeat readings at the
end, can't see what's happening, just feel). Mother is screaming at the top of
her lungs, partner has no idea what's going on (presuming not same sex). I
seriously can't think of any job where the pressure is so intense for every
single day of work, without exception. Maybe in triage, but that'd be about
it.

A water treatment worker checks that various readings are within limits, and
makes adjustments according to a set of standard operating procedures
(presuming here, to be fair). I'd also presume there'd be a good number of
check points during the journey of dam water to the final product in the
pipes. There's no redundancy with midwifery that I can see.

~~~
belorn
The jobs are clearly very different but what we are discussing is doing direct
compensation for the risk that third-party people are exposed to in the case
of a failure. The theory is that by giving the operator higher pay you reduce
the risk to third-parties, in which case water treatment failure is one of the
top risks that can effect a very high number of people. A midwife that makes a
erroneous decision kills one or two people, a erroneous decision in the water
system of a city can kill and serious harm thousands if not hundreds of
thousands. Similar is true for nuclear plants but those tend to be already
well compensated.

If we ignore the risk aspect to third-party which parent and grand parent
comment brought up, and instead focus on pressure, I can think of a few ones
which might be worse than midwife and with lower pay. Highway road workers
would be one. Having trucks going by in almost highway speed just meters next
to you while you are focusing on the work is the kind of hell on earth that I
would not want to expose myself to, and it doesn't even pay well.

Other high pressure jobs on the top of my head would be rescue swimmer, as the
profession require careful psychoanalytical pressure testing to enter the
training program. It also takes a special kind of person to work as a
explosive chemist or at the bomb squad. I would also mention the military as
an natural example of high pressure job. Each three has widely different
degree of compensation compared to each other and even within the professions
itself, and compared to midwifery it is all over the place.

There is no clean formula for X(Pressure) * Y(Third-party risk) = Z(Pay), and
implementing one would change the compensation for a wast number of
professions. I strongly doubt that midwifery would be the one that would see
the biggest effect, but I would love to see a study exploring it.

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Moru
Wow, 50/50 distribution between male/female on new midwifes, not exactly like
the IT world in the west...

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DanBC
You make a tedious point that's not worth addressing, but it's important to
point out that even in Midwiferey men get promoted faster than women, and get
promoted higher than women.

In England in September 2016 in band 5 there were 2301 women midwives and 11
men midwives. At band 8c there are 11 women midwives and 2 male midwives.

That ratio at band 5 isn't maintained as you move up the bandings - as you
increase money and management responsibility. We see more men and fewer women,
despite the very much larger pool of women to chose from.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Men in your case is 2 people, you can’t really use sample size to compare.

To be honest you’d have to be incredible to succeed as a male midwife as
almost all expectant mothers will prefer a female midwife.

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thiago_fm
Hi Mr. "goes woof",

1\. Yes, you can. His comparison works.

2\. No, they usually don't have a choice.

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hdfbdtbcdg
In most countries you can ask for a different doctor/nurse/midwife.

