When we start thinking about looking for a baby, it seems that the universe agrees that we see pregnant women everywhere. You may also have noticed that when a woman is pregnant, other women around her also break the news soon after.
Some might argue that it is a matter of age, or simply chance, but science has been in charge of proving that pregnancy really is contagious .
A call effect among women
When a woman becomes pregnant, there is a knock-on effect or chain reaction between women in the same environment, so that the women around her, whether they are co-workers, sisters, cousins, friends, etc., are more likely to stay pregnant too.
The largest study in this regard was carried out by researchers at the German University of Bamberg, where they analyzed the behavior of 42,000 women from 7,600 companies. The study, entitled “Fertility and social interaction at work” ensures that a woman’s tendency to get pregnant for the first time increases the chances that a coworker will too.
Analysis of data from 1993 to 2007 showed “a clear contagion effect in the year after the birth of a colleague’s baby,” write Engelhardt-Wölfler, authors of the study. The tendency to get pregnant for the first time was almost double during this period.
The explanation given by the researchers was that interacting with pregnant colleagues strengthens the desire to have children. When seeing a woman, partner or friend, pregnant or already with her baby, other women experience the desire to be a mother and see their self-confidence in their abilities to be one increased.
There is also another study, published in 2014, that reached a similar conclusion by looking at the interactions of 1,700 women over 15 years, from 15 to 30 years of age.
They saw that having a child (or not having one) was largely related to what each woman’s friends did . Something similar happened when deciding to have sex, joining a union, using contraception, or deciding to abort a baby. If you did any of this, the women around you were more likely to do the same.
Logically, the contagion effect of pregnancy was greater among colleagues who were approximately the same age, with an age difference of a maximum of two years .
Support from other pregnant women
The experts concluded, as we have already commented, that when a vital decision is linked to moments of uncertainty, when there are many factors associated with that decision, many questions to assess, the fact of seeing someone you know take the step encourages the rest to do so. also .
Watching other women you know become pregnant can make them feel capable of being mothers at that particular time in their lives as well.
Do you have that feeling? Do you think that being mothers other friends or acquaintances were also mothers as a consequence?
In Babies and more | These four sisters are pregnant at the same time and will give birth within a few months of each other.
