We 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 this way? 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 during 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 increased a little. » Change has taken place quietly but surely over these four decades.
The months of July and August 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.
Why has the seasonality of births changed? The Institute of Statistics of Quebec does not have a precise answer to provide, emphasizing that it is difficult to separate what comes from change in behavior, environment and culture. Sociodemographer Laurence Charton 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 vacations used to be a great time, perhaps because, quite simply, couples were spending more time together. Today, they may have more control.
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 wanting to have a child naturally, and the highest proportion of them started 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 put the baby on the road,” says Professor Laurence Charton. An environmental factor could be added to this: the heat during the summer reduces sperm concentration, 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 lowest birth rates occur during the cold seasons, an observation that has not changed since the 1980s.
Montrealer Karine Jean-Louis gave birth to her first child in September. Her daughter was due September 29 (but she arrived in early October). And this is no coincidence. Why, September? One word: daycare. “I admit that I did a lot of calculating 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. “Summer is 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’s probably linked to less important professional activities in these regions,” she believes.
