Last evening, grandpa and I were at dinner with long (we never say old) friends whose oldest son and his wife just had their third child, finally a girl, twelve and fourteen years younger than her brothers! We then started talking about how little information we had about pregnancy when we were pregnant, and even how little information her daughter in law had fifteen years ago compared to today. The internet provides instant and vast information on any pregnancy question. We discussed, of course, and debated, whether this was a good thing or a bad thing when one is pregnant.
Then, I opened the newpaper this morning and found “What Do Pregnant Women Want?” the title of a New York Times article by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, May 18, 2014. He writes,
“. . . I recently studied anonymous, aggregate Google search data from 20 countries to find out what was really going on. It turns out that much of what I thought about pregnancy was wrong, and that pregnancy plays out very differently around the world.”
My first question, which was never really answered is why other than “I am at an age when many of my friends are pregnant,” was this young man, “a contributing opinion writer who recently received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard,” spending so much time and effort on this topic! However, the results are interesting.
Sex seems to remain an area of interest and inquiry to pregnant women around the world. Cravings seem to be the same around the world, “ice, salt, sweets, spicy foods.” Makes me wonder if I am pregnant! Maybe having these cravings is a result of long ago pregnancies? But, where is chocolate? I would definitely keep chocolate craving on a life long list.
He does give an opinion – about the information engine network:
Interestingly, the huge differences in questions posed around the world have only a small amount to do with different diets. They are most likely caused by the overwhelming flood of information coming from disparate sources in each country: legitimate scientific studies, so-so scientific studies, old wives’ tales and neighborhood chatter. It is difficult for women to know what to focus on – or what to Google.
I guess my long friend and I were right. Pregnant women still don’t know what to believe. Now they just have more worry, because they have more information, not necessarily better information for making pregnancy easier.
The worry the author found in the searches seemed mostly to do about food! In the U.S., pregnant women worry about eating shrimp, drinking wine or coffee, eating sushi,. . . .and taking tylenol. My favorite country in pregnant worry was Brazil, “dye hair, take Dipirona (pain relief), take paracetamol (pain relief), ride a bike, fly.” I think, from what I can remember, that my biggest worry search would have matched the only place to ask this question, Nigeria, “stop vomiting.” Today, it seems, “prevent or avoid stretch marks” is the top search. I cannot remember if it was even a thought for me when I was pregnant.
The article got weird early. Mr. Davidowitz wrote:
It is also instructive to look at what expectant fathers are searching for. In Mexico, the top searches about “my pregnant wife” include “frases de amor para mi esposa embarazada” (words of love to my pregnant wife) and “poemas para mi esposa embarazada” (poems for my pregnant wife). In the United States, the top searches include “my wife is pregnant now what” and “my wife is pregnant what do I do.”
We can see another clear difference when we look at the top searches for “how to ___ during pregnancy?” In the United States, Australia and Canada, the top search is “how to prevent stretch marks during pregnancy.” But in Ghana, India and Nigeria, preventing stretch marks is not in the top five. These countries tend to be more concerned with how to have sex or how to sleep.
Some of what you find is pretty bizarre. In a few countries, for example, men reveal a new desire after their wives give birth: to be breast-fed by their wives. In India, the top search, by far, beginning “my husband wants” is “my husband wants me to breastfeed him.” In addition, in India, the most common search including both “how to” and “my husband” is “how to breastfeed my husband.” In the United States, this desire is rare. It is not in the top 10 searches for “my husband wants,” and it falls behind “my husband wants to share me” and “my husband wants to be a woman.”
Okay. Mr. Davidowitz got to his real interest–the odd and obscure. But, what he really shows to this Grandma is that we are not all that different around the world. And, as a man, he left out the most important desire of a pregnant woman— to have a healthy baby. That is what is most on the mind of every grandma, too, I think.
I am glad that Mr. Davidowitz spent the hours to search Google data from 20 countries. So, is the internet providing such vast and varied information to pregnant women a good thing or a bad thing? I do not know but I know taking advice from an internet search can be dangerous. As a woman who once was pregnant, I think we women know old wives tales may be the best advice to take with a grain of salt (that I still crave) with
Joy,
Mema
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