How having a boy can increase the risk of post natal depression

MOTHERS who have baby boys are much more likely to suffer post-natal depression, a study has found.

Giving birth to a boy increased the odds of developing the condition by between 71 and 79 per cent compared with having a baby girl, researchers found.

Having a male baby should now be considered a risk factor for post-natal depression, or PND, the team from the University of Kent say.

one theory is that depression may be more likely because most mothers would rather have a baby girl than a boy. That seems to be supported by research in India, Turkey and China – all countries where boy babies are more highly favoured than girls, and all countries where PND is less common in mothers of boys than girls.

In the UK, women who express a preference are twice as likely to want a girl than a boy, studies show. Depression may also be triggered because male babies are known to cause inflammation in the mother’s body to a greater extent than female babies.

Having a boy was not the only risk in significant labour the factor latest – women was for study. PND a who complicated Even identified suffered more birth per cent complications more likely to were experience 174 PND compared with those who had no complications, the researchers found.

Study co-author Dr Sarah Johns said: ‘PND is a condition that is avoidable, and it has been shown that giving women at risk extra help and support can make it less likely to develop. ‘The finding that having a baby boy or a difficult birth increases a woman’s risk gives health practitioners two new and easy ways to identify women who would particularly benefit from additional support in the first few weeks and months.’

Both the gestation of male foetuses and birth complications have known links with increased inflammation, yet until this research their relationships with PND were unclear. The study, published in Social Science & Medicine, used the complete reproductive histories of 296 women.

Joy Kemp, of the Royal College of Midwives, said: ‘What is important is that our maternity services are able to offer women the support they need throughout and after their pregnancy.

‘Currently only around half of NHS trusts in England provide a specialist maternal mental health service to women and this is simply not good enough.’

Separately, research by an international team of anthropologists has shown that women have a strong preference for having daughters. Dr Robert Lynch, of Turku University in Finland, and US colleagues asked 347 women and 423 men about their preference for a male or female child.

Participants were shown rapid-fire images of baby girls and boys and asked to categorise them with positive or negative adjectives.

Writing in Scientific Reports, Dr Lynch was surprised to find that ‘women from all socioeconomic backgrounds expressed implicit and explicit preferences for daughters’. In contrast, the men had consistent, albeit weaker, preferences for sons.

‘Support during and after pregnancy’