This is a really really important issue that isn't talked about nearly enough. I hope people are listening! (The ratio of male to female commenters is pretty discouraging.)

Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much everyone is dropping the ball on this.

Third and fourth-wave feminism have precious little to say about childbirth except that it's okay not to give birth. Okay, so maybe gender is performative in a largely socially-constructed way, but childbirth is not.

The conservatives who love to tout their support of (traditional) families and (traditional) family values are strangely silent about robust support for the essential step necessary for a family to exist.

Few areas of science have the degree of gender equality that medicine does and really basic research into quality of outcome with childbirth continues to be neglected. (Example: we're still at the level of asking, "Huh, do pelvic floor exercises help urinary incontinence at all?" with answers of "yeah, kinda" instead of "Which of these training regimes are best, and does the optimal exercise routine depend on the weight of, fitness of, and injury suffered by the mother?")

It's like everyone forgot that we're biological creatures. We forgot that creating new life as a K-specialized mammal is hard. We forgot that humans' ability to care for one another allowed us to gain a competitive advantage by making it extra, extra hard in exchange for having offspring with such incredible potential. We forgot that the species doesn't even continue to exist without childbirth. No other process is as necessary or as magical. Wouldn't one think that we would invest massive amounts of our amazing technology and brainpower and surplus resources in order to understand how to improve outcomes (beyond just infant and maternal mortality which are, to be fair, extremely low now)?

I really don't have a good idea of how to change this. But I really hope people listen. That, at least, could be a first step. A second step would be for everyone else to try to emulate whichever country does the best in this regard right now (e.g. Finland has the best antenatal care I know about)--because we do certainly know a lot more than nothing, and we're not even taking advantage of that.