While 89% of mothers and 84% of fathers ask the sex of their child before birth, some parents still don’t want to know. Who are these diehards?
- Only one in ten couples do not want to know the sex of their baby before birth.
- According to a new French survey, these couples have particular profiles.
- For example, they are more educated and more religious than the average.
Contrary to what has long been done, asking to know the sex of the unborn child has become a norm from which only one in ten couples turn away in France. Who are those today who still wish to know nothing?
“For the first time in France, the French Longitudinal Study since Childhood (Elf) makes it possible to analyze these behaviors on a national scale, based on a large representative sample of births in 2011”, writes INED in a press release.
Knowing the sex of the child before birth is a massive phenomenon
The institute has just established, thanks to a new investigation that asking to know the sex of the child before birth is a massive phenomenon: 89% of mothers and 84% of fathers said they had already done so. “Nevertheless, if the phenomenon is generalized, significant variations can be observed,” continue the authors of the research.
Thus, 97% of mothers under the age of 25 ask for the sex of their unborn child, compared to 92% of those aged 25-29 and 89% of those aged 30 or over. Being parents for the first time is also associated with a slightly more frequent request for this information: 92.5% for the first child compared to 90% when it is not the first. “In families which already have at least one child, the demand depends partly on the sex of the elders. When the parents of two children have only had boys or only girls, they ask more for the sex than when They already have mixed offspring.”add the researchers in their report.
Another lesson from the new survey: couples who do not wish to know the sex of their child before birth are three times more numerous in highly educated environments (15%) than in lowly educated environments (5%). “This variation based on diploma could be due to social differences, particularly in relationships to the medicalization of pregnancy, the propensity to resist dominant social norms, the search for distinctive practices or even tolerance for uncertainty,” analyzes INED. “It has, for example, been observed that the most educated couples have a tendency to display a relative distance from the numerous social injunctions to gender the preparations for welcoming an unborn child,” adds the institute.
“Medical monitoring is more or less favorable to knowing the sex during pregnancy”
Finally, mothers and, to a lesser extent, fathers who regularly practice a religion ask significantly less often than others to know the sex during pregnancy.
“Medical monitoring of pregnancy is more or less favorable to knowing the sex before birth. Thus, when the woman has had numerous prenatal visits (12 consultations or more) or ultrasounds (5 or more), couples have a little more often asked to know the sex of the child”, concludes the research.
