Lifestyle

You are ‘more likely to get pregnant’ if your work colleagues are pregnant


It’s no coincidence that people at work get pregnant at the same time (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Have you ever noticed that lots of people in the office seem to get pregnant around the same time? Well there is a scientific reason for this phenomenon.

Pregnancies are ‘contagious’ between colleagues in the workplace and between siblings in the family, according to new research by the University of Cologne.

The study found that if a colleague becomes a mother, the chances of further pregnancies in the workplace increases – and the same effect can be found between siblings.

The researchers analysed data from the Dutch systems of Social Statistical Datasets (SSD), which contains information about family members and workplaces of the whole Dutch population.

The study reveals that if a child is born to a sibling or a colleague, this can trigger a chain reaction because a person who has the desire to have a child can in turn influence their siblings, and then influence their own colleagues.

This suggests that things like social learning can lead to a contagious spread of fertility through social networks.

‘We suspect that this kind of effect happens in the workplace primarily due to social learning; colleagues may influence each other’s fertility decisions because they can learn from them about the consequences of becoming a parent, and how parenthood influences work and family life,’ says Professor Leopold.

The research also found that people who are of reproductive age, and who rarely experience births among their siblings and colleagues, are less likely to have children.

Furthermore, a simulation showed that without the contagion effects, the numbers of pregnancies would drop by 5.8% without colleague effects, and by 1.5% without sibling effects.

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