Which Countries Are Most Family-Friendly?

We've already spoken about Finland, where the risk of maternal death is less than one in 12,000, and 2.9 in 1,000 children will die before age five. Girls are expected to receive nearly 17 years of primary and secondary education, and 42 percent of parliamentary seats are taken up by women.

Which country ranks lowest? It's the “Democratic Republic” of Congo, where one in 30 mothers die in childbirth and 167.7 children per 1,000 will die before they reach age five. Only 8.3 percent of governmental seats are taken up by women, who are expected to receive just over eight years of formal education in their lifetime.

How does your country rank on the Mothers' Index? The Top Five are taken up by Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and the Netherlands. These are all European countries, as you see, and Australia was the only non-European country to rank within the Top Ten, at a sad 10.

According to Save The Children, this is because the US has the highest premature birth rate in the developed world as well. One in eight babies are born before they should be (perhaps because the national c-section rate is sky high at nearly one-third of births as well?).

The US also has a high teenage pregnancy rate, and teen moms are both less likely to receive quality prenatal care and to finish their education. Is the Mothers' Index a wake up call for all Americans who have the power to change something? We'll see.

The United Kingdom (not broken down into its individual countries, though that would be interesting to see) ranks 23^rd, while Canada takes 22^nd place. South Africa is at number 77, and India at 142.

The Mother's Index is fascinating to look at. In some ways, it's very telling — mortality rates form an objective measurement that's hard to argue with. On the other hand, I don't personally believe that years of formal schooling and female participation in government necessarily say that much.

The country in which I'm currently living with my family ranks 36^th in the 2013 Mothers' Index. It's a developing economy, and though mortality rates are fairly low, there's much more to family well-being than that. The Mother's Index doesn't show that five percent of school-aged children aren't enrolled in the compulsory primary education system, for instance, or that one in seven children go hungry every evening. Nor does it show that four percent of children between the ages of five and 14 are engaged in some type of employment, despite labor laws that ban this practice.

The conclusion? The Mother's Index tells a significant part of the story, but certainly not all of it.

Key Findings In The State Of The World's Mothers Report

Wondering what the State of the World's Mothers report, which delves deeper than the Mothers' Index, found?

Around one million babies die on the day they were born worldwide every year. Eight thousand newborns die within their first month of life every month, and 800 mothers a day die in childbirth. Forty million women give birth without the help of a skilled attendant each year. The vast majority of newborn and maternal deaths take place in developing countries (98 and 99 percent respectively), mostly due to lack of access to basic health care and hygiene.

The good news is that maternal and child mortality rates are declining faster than ever before. Maternal deaths and child deaths after the first month of life have dropped by 47 percent since 1990, and countries are implementing changes that serve to improve the situation even more.

The report points out that Malawi is actively promoting breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact to keep babies warm, while Nepal and Nigeria are using disinfecting gels to prevent umbilical cord infections. Uganda has introduced the more widespread use of prenatal steroids to prevent death following premature birth, and Ethiopia is starting a country-wide campaign that involves thousands of healthcare workers in the fight against newborn infections. Dozens of countries have halved newborn mortality over the last 10 years.

Save The Children is proposing a set of low-cost and high-impact measures to further reduce maternal, under-five, and newborn mortality. These include promotion of breastfeeding and inexpensive medical interventions such as injectable antibiotics.