Male births linked to less quality of life

NANCY, France, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- A study, in a French community without cultural pressures favoring male children, found having a male baby was linked to a reduced quality of life.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing, found that just less than one-third of the 181 women they studied four to eight weeks after delivery had postnatal depression and reduced quality of life.

Claude de Tychey of the Universite Nancy 2, in France, said 9 percent of the women in the study had severe postnatal depression and three-quarters of those had given birth to boys.

However, the researchers also discovered that, even if women didn't have postnatal depression, giving birth to a boy was significantly more likely to reduce their quality of life than delivering a girl.

The researchers measured the women's quality of life using a questionnaire containing 36 questions that asked the mothers to score eight dimensions of their health -- physical functioning, physical role, bodily pain, mental health, emotional role, social functioning, vitality and general health -- using a 100-point scale.

Women who had given birth to a boy reported lower quality of life scores in 70 percent of cases compared with women who had delivered a girl, regardless of whether they suffered from postnatal depression.