We all know a thousand and one surefire ways to get pregnant: pat the expectant mother on the belly, drink from her mug, sit on her chair … In some offices, even, like legends, stories are passed from mouth to mouth about the “homely” workplaces from which women one by one go on maternity leave. And even if a man sits on the “pregnant” chair, his family will also soon be replenished. And it turned out that not all of these beliefs are stupid superstitions.
You can believe it, you can laugh, but scientists were able to calculate a certain mechanism by which such signs work. The pattern was revealed by a team of scientists from Germany and the Netherlands, having studied data from the register of the Netherlands, which contains information about brothers, sisters and employers.
“If at least one of the women’s colleagues became a mother, then the likelihood that a childless woman will also have a baby increases significantly,” says a demographer at the University of Bamberg, professor Henrietta Engelhardt-Welfler… “Further, this may affect the decision of her brothers and sisters to have children, they, in turn, will ‘infect’ their colleagues … Such a chain reaction was a revelation for us.”
The effect is stronger among women, the researchers say. Although men, too, often succumb to the influence of the environment. The desire to have a child grows most strongly when nephews or nieces are born to someone from a married couple.
“Most likely, the reason is the emotional closeness of relatives,” suggests Henrietta Engelhardt-Welfler.
By the way, there is also the opposite effect. The fewer families with babies surrounded by a couple, the lower the likelihood that young spouses will start working on their own expansion of the family.
About what psychological problems prevent conception, read on .