Kristie McNealy, MD

This morning, I read a news article that I found fascinating. Apparently, when women live in communities where there is no particular preference over giving birth to a male versus a female infant, those women who had boys had a much higher rate of post-partum depression (PPD) and a lower quality of life.

Researchers studied women in a French community where women faced no cultural pressures over the sex of their baby. The women were given a 36 question survey 4 to 8 weeks after delivery which had the women rate eight dimensions of their health on a 100 point scale.

The study showed just under a third of the women suffered from post-partum depression, and 9% suffered from severe PPD. More than 75% of the women suffering from severe PPD had recently given birth to boys. The study also showed that gender played a role in women without post-partum depression as well, with women who had baby boys having lower quality of life scores in 90% 0f the health dimensions when compared to women with new baby girls. When you looked at all of the women, irrespective of their PPD status, 70% of women with poor quality of life scores had recently given birth to boys.

It’s interesting to note that being a first-time mom had no impact on quality of life scores. Mom’s who had delivered their second baby were more likely to have had a girl the first time around. That doesn’t seem very surprising seeing how miserable many of the moms of boys were in this study. I would hesitate to have another baby too if the first had had such a rotten impact on my quality of life. It would be interesting to see more data on these same women when they get further out from delivery.

Reference: De Tychey , Briançon, Lighezzolo, Spitz, Kabuth, De Luigi, Messembourg, Girvan, Rosati, Thockler and Vincent. Quality of life, postnatal depression and baby gender. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 2007:17, 312–322.

Photo by: Hilde Vanstraelen (downloaded from stock.xchange)

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