It might seem very strange to you that giving birth is such a difficult thing for us. We have to go to a special place of medical care, use all this advanced technology, scream in agony for hours and hours on end, often take lots of drugs, and have a dozen people involved.
Wild animals just kind of… pop one out.
well.
If you do think that sometimes then you are correct in your observation that humans, relative to most other animals have a very hard time giving birth. Not only is it difficult and dangerous for females (mothers) but it is also difficult for infants. Two major questions are raised: how could such difficult labour come to be evolutionary speaking? And why has it persisted given that it can be so costly to humans?
First the how: Simply put because of the physiological obstetrical dilemma that all females face.
A bi-product of the development of bipedalism is that our hips became narrow, this made the birthing canal smaller. Then selective pressures caused us to have larger brains, this means babies when born started to have larger and larger heads that made it hard to push the baby out. These two features, in conjunction make birthing very difficult, labour intensive and sometimes very dangerous for women. We also have developed some traits which counteract this difficult labour, the cartilage in women’s hips loosens during birth allowing the birthing canal to open wider. Also, the plates of bone in an infants head are separated and squish as the baby comes out the canal - this is normal, the plates fuse after birth to give a hard rigid skull of adults.
Can a female human give birth without the aid of someone else? Yes! Is it wise to do so considering our physiology? No! (forget cultural preferences of how birthing should be carried out, or modern medicine…I am talking pure facts about human anatomy). Birthing is an extremely dangerous for human females compared with other animals. We need help, not only in the process of delivering but also in cleaning and caring for the infant after its born. Humans thus have undergone a “biocultural” adaptation of obligate midwifery in that someone - anyone other than the mother - must help with birth of the infant. Across cultures we see this - usually a female relative will help in the birthing process and it involves more than just “emotional support”, they help orientate the baby, cushion it as it comes out, clear up air passages and fix the umbilical cord…
Moreover, humans are cooperative breeders - meaning that we need help of others to raise our infants to adulthood. Individuals other then the mother (usually female kin) may help in many ways: feed the baby milk, and later care for the baby by giving it food, carrying it or teaching it how to survive in both its social and natural world. Or indirectly by protecting the territory of the family/tribe. They may help the mother by giving her family food, shelter or clothes, or generally just being generous while she takes care of a young infant. They may also (and usually do) preform babysitting functions.
Thus humans have adapted behaviourally to the problems put forward by our anatomy when it comes to birth. We are able to lessen the costs of birth, and continue to benefit from the traits which led to the problem in the first place (large brains and bipedalism).
Now we ask, why has it persisted? Because there is a trade off, the cost of having a labour go wrong is less then the benefits of being bipedal and having big brains. Remember evolution is not goal orientated, just because something is costly does not mean it has to be or can be eliminated from the physiology or anatomy of a species. Obviously, a few miscarriages, still-births, difficult labours and deaths of mothers and/or infants has not stopped us from reproducing, as can be seen by our extremely large population of 7 billion.