Do Most People Find Out the Gender of Their Baby
Honey Mona,
Could y'all tell me how many couples make up one's mind not to know their baby's sex? How much does this change depending on whether information technology's the commencement pregnancy or not? I will exist a father in a few months, and I have started discussing this topic with my wife and friends who already take children.
Thank you,
Thomas, 32, French republic
Dear Thomas,
Congratulations! I'm non surprised this question is of involvement to you — it's likewise of interest to some doctors. They've been studying parents' attitudes toward the sexual activity of their unborn children because in some cases, doctors believe the conclusion to terminate a pregnancy is based on the sex of the fetus — which raises upstanding questions for medical practitioners. And withal, despite the interest in the topic, there is little reliable data on how many parents decide to find out if information technology's a girl or a male child.
So my starting bespeak is a study conducted in 2001. A team of doctors from Harvard Medical School in Boston issued ane,340 questionnaires to mothers-to-be and their male partners who were present. They constitute that overall, 58 percent of women and 58 percentage of men said they had plant out or planned to find out the sex of the fetus. (Sorry, I don't have numbers on how many respondents said they didn't want to know, so I can't reply your question direct.) Already, you're in the minority of parents, Thomas, since you told me that you and your wife are leaning toward not finding out.
Your indecisiveness about finding out the sexual practice at this stage in your wife'southward pregnancy likewise puts y'all in the minority. The researchers observed that "almost all parents feel strongly i way or the other nearly whether it is best to know the fetal sexual practice before birth." But virtually parents (84 percent of mothers and 80 percent of fathers) say they don't accept a potent preference nearly the sex activity of the baby.
Women who got pregnant accidentally, those who were planning a major move or renovation based on the sex of the baby and women who said the baby's sex would influence their time to come childbearing decisions were all more than probable to know or plan to discover out the sexual activity.
As for the 2nd part of your question, Thomas — does information technology make a difference if this is the get-go pregnancy or not? Well, 62 per centum of women with simply i kid wanted to detect out the sex of the fetus compared with 55 percent of women who didn't yet have any children.
But at that place's more to it than that. Family configurations seem to matter a lot. Women who already had one or more than children of each sexual practice were just equally likely equally childless women to want to know the sexual activity. (I realize I'm talking virtually but women here — the researchers presented the findings that way because they constitute so much overlap between partners' responses: Only 2 percent of fathers wanted to learn the baby's sexual activity when the mother did not, and only three per centum of mothers wished to find out the sex when the begetter did not.)
Across stated preferences, demographics seem to affect the likelihood of wanting to notice out the sex of the fetus. The written report identified a few statistically significant variables, such equally age — men and women who were younger than 22 or older than 40 were more likely to desire to know the fetal sex. Being unmarried, nonwhite and less educated too increased the likelihood of wanting to know the sex of the fetus, and being Catholic made it much less likely.
The researchers allowed respondents to select from a list of reasons why they wanted to find out the sex of the fetus and to write their own responses. The almost unremarkably chosen reasons were "planning/preparation" and "marvel," but, as ever, the qualitative responses written in the respondents' ain words are just as revealing. The answers included:
- "Lost a baby boy — apprehensive nearly having a male child."
- "Provision of some perhaps illusory sense of control."
- "My mom has been fighting breast cancer and might not be with usa when the baby is born. If this hadn't been the example, we probably wouldn't observe out."
Those who didn't want to know the sex also gave their reasons. Most selected "surprise at birth/suspense," but again they had the chance to provide more personal answers. Responses included:
- "Tradition."
- "Don't want to get also attached in case of problem."
- "There is cypher improve than the doctor telling y'all what yous accept only brought into the earth. I dear surprises, and at that place aren't really opportunities for true surprises every bit an adult."
I wanted to cheque the Harvard squad'southward findings against some other studies (preferably more recent ones!), but as I mentioned before, the research on this really is scant. The best I tin find is a 2012 study by researchers in the Netherlands that found that 69 per centum of pregnant women and 77 percent of their partners surveyed in 2009-10 wanted to know the sex of the fetus. That study too plant that most prospective parents didn't have a sex preference (86 percentage of women and 82 percent of partners said they didn't intendance either fashion), and most had picked out a proper noun for both a boy and a girl. Only that questionnaire was completed by simply 210 pregnant women, all of whom had been referred for prenatal diagnosis to exclude Down syndrome, which could make these results less applicable to a broader population.
The polling company Gallup surveyed 1,014 U.S. adults on this topic in 2007. Gallup found that 47 percent of respondents said they would want to know the sex of a baby before information technology was built-in, and 51 per centum wouldn't desire to know. Merely those results probably aren't slap-up in terms of accuracy — the respondents weren't necessarily expecting a infant, they were presented with a hypothetical scenario: "suppose that you just found out you were having a babe … ."
Nigh of the research I've described then far is about the United States, but I reckon parental preferences are likely influenced past culture and therefore vary from country to country. The best study I can detect that relates to your native France suggests that the geographic differences are huge. According to ELFE (a longitudinal French study that follows 18,000 children), nine out of 10 French parents decide to notice out the sexual activity of the fetus. And dissimilar the American couples in the written report I mentioned before, 40 percent of parents in France say they do take a preference about the sex of the baby. All of which suggests that you and your wife's current inclination is all the more unusual.
Hope the numbers help,
Mona
Have a question you would similar answered here? Send it to @MonaChalabi or dearmona@fivethirtyeight.com .
Mona Chalabi is data editor at the Guardian Usa, and a columnist at New York Magazine. She was previously a pb news writer for FiveThirtyEight. @MonaChalabi
Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-parents-to-be-want-to-know-the-babys-sex/#:~:text=They%20found%20that%20overall%2C%2058,the%20sex%20of%20the%20fetus.
0 Response to "Do Most People Find Out the Gender of Their Baby"
Post a Comment