When couples are isolated indoors during lockdown and didn’t have much else to do, it seems logical they would be having more sex and more often that not this resulted in more babies being born. It’s hard work taking care of a newborn baby but imagine how difficult it was becoming a parent during the pandemic, coping with shortages of toilet paper and formula, not to mention the financial cost of taking care of a baby when millions of jobs were lost during lockdown.
The cohort of babies born during the global pandemic have come to be known as “corona babies.” The term started to appear in online articles and social media posts around March 2020 and the term appears in the Urban Dictionary:
A baby created as a result of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, where people isolated together indoors with nothing better to do than “work from home” and hoard toilet paper.
“Did you know they just had a corona baby?”
“Being shut in together for 2 months will do that”
“At least the corona baby has a lifetime supply of TP“
The possibility of a Covid baby boom was discussed in a tweet posted by Starcasm on March 16, 2020.
Back in 2020 The List published a YouTube video asking viewers the question “will the coronavirus lead to a baby boom?”
More than two years after lockdown we have the answer to this question. An article published for the Daily Caller on May 24, 2022 acknowledged there had been an increase in the birth rate caused by the pandemic:
The U.S. birthrate saw a 1% increase over the course of 2021 with 3.66 million babies being born throughout the year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics. All age groups of women over 25 contributed to the jump in birthrates, with some experts suggesting that a lengthening COVID-19 pandemic might have contributed to the bump, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Bryan Babb
Social Media Trends as of October 9, 2022
Facebook #coronababy: 11,000 people are posting about this
Instagram #coronababy: 43,396 posts
TikTok #coronababy: 29,900,000 views
YouTube #coronababy: 100 videos and channels
Google Trends: “corona baby” peaked during the week of March 15th 2020 which coincided with lockdown.
Sources:
Babb, Bryan. “CORONA-BABIES: US Birth Rate Increases For The First Time In Seven Years.” DailyCaller.com. May 24, 2022. URL: https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/24/us-birth-rate-increase-covid-pandemic/.
dots4dickn. “Corona baby.” Urban Dictionary. March 14, 2020. URL: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Corona%20baby.
Mercenary_hero. “Covid babies on the way…” meme. MemeDroid.com. June 14, 2021. URL: https://www.memedroid.com/memes/detail/3380395/Covid-babies-on-the-way.
Starcasm. “9 months from now there are going to be a LOT of babies being born…” Twitter. March 16, 2020. URL: https://twitter.com/starcasm/status/1239636704392249347.
The List channel. “Will The Coronavirus Lead To A Baby Boom?” YouTube. 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vuIsV2XSXg.