Birth and Maternal Health Around the World How do women in other
countries have babies, and how is it different from birth in the
U.S.? We’ve rounded up surprising, sometimes harrowing
childbirth traditions from around the globe. Plus: Where’s the
best place in the world to give birth? In America, where 99% of
births take place in the hospital and the national c-section
rate is at an all-time high of 34%, we’re pretty used to the
medical model of childbirth. Well, it turns out that we’ve
exported this model to the far corners of the world; in Japan,
Korea and China, Western-style hospital births have all but
replaced traditional home birth in the last few decades. But in
other countries and cultures, old ways and rituals remain. In
the book Childbirth Across Cultures, edited by my very own mom,
Helaine Selin gathers portraits of the new ways of giving birth,
as well as the old, in the non-Western world. Here, she shares
fascinating childbirth traditions from around the world, and be
prepared: they range from