The confinement baby boom did not take place in France.

When the first confinement was announced in March 2020, many Internet users predicted a significant increase in future births, flooding social networks with jokes of all kinds.

The "Covid generation" was born.

Confined at home for two whole months from mid-March then another four weeks at the very end of October, some imagined that couples would take advantage of this unprecedented situation to get closer and conceive a baby.

A 37% increase in pregnancy test sales a month later and a 26% drop in contraceptive sales during the same period seemed to support this theory.

If we're all confined for 40 days, I predict a #BabyBoom!

# Covid_19 # COVID19 #coronavirus # macron20h pic.twitter.com/0QCFYvLXyF

- Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (Off.) (@BonisseurdeLB) March 12, 2020

But nine months later, the statistics fell: not only was there no rebound in the birth rate, but on the contrary, there was a drop in the number of newborns.

The figures collected by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) and published on January 21 indeed reveal a 2% drop in the birth rate in France in 2020. Only 740,000 babies were born during the year, 13,000 fewer births than in 2019. The lowest historical level since 1945.

How to explain such a phenomenon ?

If this drop in the birth rate is partly linked to the natural decline of the time - the number of births has been decreasing every year for the past six years due to increasingly late pregnancies with lower fertility - this explanation cannot be sufficient to explain this "sharp" fall recorded by INSEE.

Postponed or abandoned baby plans

For specialists in the matter, there are many reasons for this drop in the number of births.

Better, this fall was predictable.

Eva Beaujouan, researcher on late fertility in Europe at the University of Vienna, believes that economic and health crises - such as the Great Depression in the 1930s or the influenza pandemic of the late 1970s - have historically always led to a temporary slowdown in births.

"The way people really experience a lockdown and a pandemic is very different from the way they may have projected it, explains the researcher to France 24. This period was much more stressful [than expected] and resulted in very big changes for people in terms of work and unemployment. This new uncertain context may therefore have pushed couples to postpone their baby plans. "

An argument supported by a recent study published by the journal Demographic Research and devoted to the impact of Covid-19 on plans to have a child in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Numerous people interviewed during the study confirmed that they had postponed or completely abandoned their baby plans due to the pandemic.

In France, 50.7% of people declared having postponed their design project, while 17.3% of people questioned admitted having completely abandoned it.

In addition to the economic fears and the general uncertainty linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, one can think that the containment measures alone have played a major role in the sudden drop in the number of births.

"For single people, forced to stay at home, it was obviously more difficult to meet a partner", underlines Eva Beaujouan.

But the confinement also affected the couples.

The stress of the situation could also have disrupted the fertility cycles of women and the libido of partners.

"No time to kiss"

The confinement also caused an overload of work and a reorganization which could have required a lot of energy from the couples.

"In the end, couples who were locked at home with their kids may have found themselves with so much to do that they didn't even have time to kiss," jokes the maternity researcher. late.

More seriously, the scientist also believes that some people who were following a course of treatment in medically assisted procreation (MAP) also had to put their project on hold due to the closure of fertility centers during the first confinement in France.

Still, these major crises which reduce the birth rate are generally temporary and are often followed by a "significant recovery when life returns to its normal course and people find jobs, concludes Eva Beaujouan. In France, it is quite possible that we therefore see a catch-up with a baby boom within three years. "

This article has been adapted from the English by Aude Mazoué.

The original article by Louise Nordstrom can be read here.

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