One might believe that roughly the same number of children are born every day in Quebec… but that is not quite the case. In humans too, there is a “seasonality of births”, which varies according to the regions of the world and the times. In Quebec as elsewhere, it has changed in recent decades.
Change your sheets and light your candles, ladies and gentlemen: December is now the month when the most babies are conceived in Quebec. It is therefore nine months later, in September, that maternity wards are busiest in Quebec. The difference is not minor: we are talking about 15% more births in September than in December, the slowest month.
Has it always been like this? No. From the beginning of the 1980s until the end of the 1990s, the peak of births was rather in the months of April and May. So a design blitz was taking place over the summer holidays. At the time, there was also a summit in September, but of lesser importance.
“It was at the beginning of the 2000s that there was a certain reversal,” observes demographer Anne Binette Charbonneau, of the Institute of Statistics of Quebec. There is a decline in births at the beginning of spring: the April peak has disappeared. And the September peak has become a little more pronounced. » Change has taken place quietly but surely over these four decades.
The months of July and August have also earned a special place in the list of the most productive months. “In fact, throughout the summer season, there are more births today than there were in the 1980s,” summarizes Anne Binette Charbonneau.
Two angles
Why has the seasonality of births changed? The Quebec Statistics Institute does not have a precise answer to provide, emphasizing that it is difficult to separate what comes from change in behavior, the environment and culture. Sociodemographer Laurence Charton, for her part, allows herself some hypotheses. According to her, the question must be approached from two angles: the moment of conception, on the one hand, and the moment of birth, on the other.
Design-wise, summer vacation used to be a great time, perhaps because, quite simply, couples were spending more time together. Today, they may have more control.
It’s been a while now, but couples can also decide a priori when they want to have their child by controlling their fertility through the use of contraception.
Laurence Charton, professor at the National Institute of Scientific Research
And perhaps today, in summer, we think more in vacation mode than in family mode, she summarizes.
Women seem to have a tendency to wait until the end of summer before starting their baby plans. Researchers followed a cohort of North American women who wanted to have a child naturally, and the highest proportion of them began trying in September, October and December. And it was at the end of November, beginning of December, that most of them became pregnant.
“In the interviews I was able to have, I remember hearing: we take one last big trip before the family, and then we send the baby on the way,” says Professor Laurence Charton. An environmental factor could be added to this: the heat during the summer reduces the concentration of sperm, and therefore fertility in men, according to studies.
If we approach the question from the other side – that of the moment of births – interesting ideas also emerge. First there is the idea of avoiding a birth in the middle of winter, a season when stroller rides are less favorable and viruses are more numerous. This Quebec reality is probably not unrelated to the fact that the trough in births occurs during the cold seasons, an observation which has not changed since the 1980s.
Finding a daycare
Montrealer Karine Jean-Louis gave birth to her first child in September. Her daughter was due to be born on September 29 (but she arrived at the beginning of October). And this is no coincidence. Why, September? One word: daycare. “I admit that I calculated quite a bit to make it easier to find a place,” confides Karine Jean-Louis. Maternity leave lasts one year, and most places become available in August, when kindergarten leaves. This is also Laurence Charton’s hypothesis. “I did interviews in Gaspésie with women who gave birth during the pandemic, and I can tell you that their big stress, even more than the pandemic, was the place in daycare,” she says.
Finally, parents also plan the birth according to their work schedule. Karine Dubois is aware of how lucky she is to have been able to choose (“it’s a luxury”), but she had her three children in June, July and August, so that her partner could take longer paternity leave. “In the summer, it’s slower at work,” she explains. When Laurence Charton looks at the birth statistics by region, she notes that, on the North Shore, in Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine and in Nord-du-Québec, there are proportionally more births than elsewhere in the colder months. “It is probably linked to less important professional activities in these regions,” she believes.
Age at school
In Quebec, September is the month of births par excellence, and children in September are the youngest in their class at school. In Sweden, the youngest in the class are those born in December. And Swedish parents would have the opposite reflex: considering that the youngest children have less chance of success at school, the Swedes would try to avoid births in November and December.
Religious dimension
In France too, the peak of births has evolved. While it was previously between February and April, it is now in July. And this change perhaps relates… to the abandonment of religious practices. Births between February and April corresponded to conceptions of the end of the Lent period as well as the period when marriages were more celebrated, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. Today, the July peak would result from couples’ preference.