Joanna: "Hari, I think you should add another factor to your list: women are not only giving birth later, but having children in a fairly stressed state (because of working full time until the last minute)...and having to return to work sometimes days after delivery. Surely that doesn't help."
HK:
I fully agree with you J. My point before was that the prior message, to me had implied a down-grading of more general societal impacts on Infant MR. Your point is well taken. I recall coming here from a still buffered UK welfare state to a situation where women were staggering around the work-place maneuvering in between small places & generally looking exhausted - until virtually the moment they were due to pop. All to save the maximum amount of weeks off (a paltry potential number given by the Canadian Governemnt, at best) to spend on junior afterwards. Understandable, but very societally sad.
There are a couple of randomized controlled trials (RCT) in fact that have targeted time off work. One was in France, where the time off work was pretty generous (I think - details fuzzy - I have not read it for years). The intervention did reduce rates of preterm labour, but if I recall was only of moderate effect size.
The question of "stress" - & its' effects are possibly (definitely I should say) much longer that just giving birth quick. Apart from the predicted consequences of "stress' on the mother (depression etc) & on the family vibes (hell etc) - there is a body of work arising that shows how hard wiring in the brain changes with "stress". The stress that you & I think of - becomes modulated into biochemical stress via the pituitary-adreno-cortical axis. [I shuddered when when the Axis of Evil phrase came about, I knew another wording in my nomenclature of life woudl be tained with awful memory impressiosn!]. I referred a while ago to the experience in the Romanian orphanages. Similar stuff goes on in less dramatic ways in other social systems it seems.
Now, I forget myself, exactly where we on environment & gene interactions?
Cheers Hari PS Personally I agree with your pragmatism on voting. But I suppose I also should read Marx far more carefully - or perhaps for the very first time.
