Moms & Their Babies Often Share Birth Month - But Why?
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Dec. 14, 2023 -- Women are more likely to have children in the same month as their own birth, and now researchers think they might know why.
Births within immediate families tend to cluster within a given month, according to data on more than 10 million deliveries in France and Spain.
Siblings tend to share the same birth month as their mom and each other, and also tend to share the same birth month as their fathers, according to findings published Dec. 14 in the journal Population Studies.
“What could cause the higher probabilities of family members being born in the same season? The potential explanations seem to be both social and biological,” researcher Adela Recio Alcaide, an epidemiologist at the University of Alcala in Spain, said in a journal news release.
People with similar backgrounds seem to have children around the same time of the year, Alcaide and her colleagues noted, and also seem to be responding to different environmental factors that affect the biology of fertility.
For this study, researchers analyzed all births in Spain from 1980 to 1983 and from 2016 to 2019, as well as all births in France from 2000 to 2003 and 2010 to 2013.
Births in a particular country tend to follow a pattern that researchers call “birth seasonality,” where more babies are born at certain times of the year than others.
But when researchers grouped the data based on the birth month of the mothers, it didn’t follow the expected pattern, researchers said.
Instead, they found a spike in January births among moms born in January, a spike in February babies among moms born in February, and so on.
Overall, there were nearly 5% more births than would be expected where the mom and her baby’s birth month coincided – for both countries and for all time periods studied.
Other patterns also bucked seasonal expectations -- 12% more shared birth months between siblings, nearly 5% more parents who shared the same birth month, and 2% more birth months common between children and fathers.
Researchers think this is because people of similar backgrounds tend to pair up, and then are more likely to give birth at certain times of the year.
For example, a woman in Spain with higher education is more likely to give birth in the spring than a woman without higher education, researchers said.
If she has a daughter, the girl is more likely to be born in the spring and also more likely to have higher education -- and thus more likely to give birth in spring herself.
Mother and daughter also would be exposed to the same sort of biological factors that affect fertility, including availability of food, exposure to sunlight, temperature and humidity, the researchers noted.
“Biological factors that are known to affect birth seasonality… also depend on socio-demographic characteristics, since different social groups are exposed to these biological factors to varying degrees,” said co-researcher Dr. Luisa Borrell, a social epidemiologist at the City University of New York.
Sources
- Taylor & Francis Group, news release, Dec. 14, 2023
Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.
© 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Posted December 2023
Read this next
Newborn Genome Analysis Spots More Health Issues Than Standard Screening
THURSDAY, Oct. 23, 2024 -- DNA analysis of newborns can detect many more preventable or treatable health problems than standard newborn screening does, a new study shows. Genome...
COVID in Pregnancy Won't Lead to Neurodevelopmental Issues in Kids
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 23, 2024 -- New research offers some comfort to pregnant women who become ill with COVID: Brain development doesn’t appear to be impaired in children exposed...
Could Caffeine in Pregnancy Help Prevent Cerebral Palsy in Kids?
TUESDAY, Oct. 22, 2024 -- Experiments in sheep are hinting that doses of caffeine given to women in pregnancy, as well as their newborns after birth, could prevent cerebral...
More news resources
- FDA Medwatch Drug Alerts
- Daily MedNews
- News for Health Professionals
- New Drug Approvals
- New Drug Applications
- Drug Shortages
- Clinical Trial Results
- Generic Drug Approvals
Subscribe to our newsletter
Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.