A survey of 1,179 mothers in New York City, led by researchers at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, also found that a third of women who were thinking about getting pregnant before the pandemic but had not yet started trying, She said that she is not considering it now. .
Study lead author and epidemiologist Linda Kahn said, “Our findings suggest that the initial COVID-19 outbreak made women think twice about expanding their families and, in some cases, reducing the number of children.” done.” , MPH.
“This is yet another example of the pandemic’s potential long-term consequences beyond the more obvious health and economic impacts,” Kahn said.
pregnancy This becomes riskier and more difficult to achieve as women age, so pandemic-induced delays can lead to increased health risks for both mother and child, as well as the need for costly fertility treatments, she said.
Kahn, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Population Health at NYU Langone Health, said all the women in the study already had at least one child, age 3 or younger.
As a result, it is possible that the challenges of caring for a young child during the peak of New York City’s outbreak and the subsequent lockdown may have played a role in their hesitation to have another child.
Preliminary evidence has already identified a decline in birth rates during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
Recent data showed that experts saw almost 300,000 fewer births in 2020 than experts expected based on annual fertility trends, with a marked decline in the last two months of the year. , which corresponds to low assumptions at the start of the outbreak in March.
However, so far, few investigations have explored the root causes behind individual parental decisions to delay pregnancy.
The new study is the first to examine pregnancy plans among mothers during the first wave of COVID-19 in New York City.
To investigate, researchers analyzed data from the ongoing Pregnancy and Child Health Study.
In the survey, which collected data from mid-April 2020, mothers were asked to recall their pregnancy plans before the pandemic as well as whether they were going ahead with their plans at the time of the survey.
Among the findings, the study showed that less than half of the mothers who stopped trying to get pregnant were certain they would resume trying to get pregnant once the pandemic was over, suggesting That they could leave rather than delay their plans to expand their families, Kahn said.
In addition, those with higher stress levels and greater financial insecurity were particularly likely to postpone or end their plans for an additional child.
According to the study’s authors, the finding highlights the importance of financial health in parenting’s decisions around pregnancy and suggests that there is an additional need for families to address the nation’s ongoing fertility decline that began in 2008. Financial assistance may be required.
“These results emphasize the toll that the coronavirus has taken not only on individual parents but perhaps on fertility rates as a whole,” said study senior author epidemiologist Melanie Jacobson, PhD, MPH.
Jacobson, a research scientist in the Department of Environmental Pediatrics at NYU Langone, cautions that the investigation only included women who were planning to have children and did not account for unplanned pregnancies.
She said the study authors next plan to repeat the survey with the same group of mothers and explore the potential impact of vaccination, an option not available at the time of the survey.
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