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When lockdowns rippled across the country last March, many experts speculated that couples cohabitating together would be more apt to have sex and therefore procreate. There is precedent for this speculation: a month-long blackout in Zanzibar in 2008 in which many were forced to stay home more frequently, just as one might during a pandemic caused a mini-baby boom nine months later.
Yet predictions of a pandemic baby boom did not take into account how the loss of jobs, income, childcare services and an overburdened healthcare system fighting a highly contagious coronavirus would take a massive mental and emotional toll on women and families across the country. Monthly birth data shows that being confined to one house with your significant other doesn t make for primed conditions to bring another human being into this world, even if popular Etsy baby-wear emblazoned with Mommy and daddy didn t practice social distancing suggests otherwise.