01 August 2006

German Pregnancy Revisited

Seems I was certainly in the minority (according to the comments) when i claimed the germans always seemed to get accidentally pregnant. Still, it keeps cropping up in my life. Recently I found out that one of my bosses had a grandchild a couple of years back who was completely unplanned.
It seems like I must be keeping the wrong sort of company. Although, considering the situation a little more, it turns out that most of the cases I know involve couples who are going out with a foreigner. Of the total, German-German couples make up 37.5% and German-foreigner couples have 62.5%. But then again maybe I just know more mixed couples. Maybe I need to work with more Germans (small company, only one proper German, but who claims to be Bayrisch)

I'm reasonably sure that Germans are quite careful when it comes to contraception and sex, and also believe that a lot of them, as one comment (from MadJan) put it:

"plan their pregnancies with "No pregnancy".....and they probably only do end up with 'accidental' pregnancies cos they were so spaced out that they forget to be cautious!!!!"

Maybe not the last part though ;-) I know quite a few couples who haven't even though about having kids yet, despite one or both partners being in their 30's (nothing wrong with that by the way), so obviously they've been fairly careful over the years (or else male infertility is quite high in Germany).

Then I thought it might be to do with abortion rates in Germany. Could higher rates mean that mean that quite a few 'mistakes' are taken care of. Or could lower rates mean that they are careful, but when it does happen then they keep the kid. But this map showed that German rates are particularly typical for the western world.

So the next step in this research is to get out there and get to know more Germans...

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. Visit the german embassy in Washington D.C. web site. It says that Germany´s birth rate is like very low. Hmmm...I´m from México, and in mexico, We are reproducing a lot. We´re too many. Certainly. In my case, i did vasectomy. I don´t want ever to have children. My e mail is bavkle@hotmail.com see you