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From: meltdown@u.washington.edu (Ulo Melton)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: More births 9 months after a major blackout?
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 04:30:58 GMT

Let me toss in my two cents regarding the blackout babies:

The notion that the 1965 blackout was responsible for a bumper crop of babies nine months later was pretty well debunked by J. Richard Udry in 1970, when he showed statistically that the birth rate for the period in question was completely unexceptional [1].

The legend seems to have gotten its start with a series of articles in the _New York Times_ [2]. Even though some of the people quoted in those articles display a good deal of skepticism, the overall tone leaves one with the impression that everybody started fucking like hound dogs when the lights went out. Maybe they did, but there's no evidence they managed to produce any more babies than usual.

(The _Times_ articles, as well as Udry's study, are available at the snopes's website [3], and make good reading.)

One aspect I haven't seen discussed yet is the role played by medical journals in spreading the legend. I've only found a couple of them that vector the story, but it's possible their influence was significant: anybody hearing it from a doctor - especially an obstetrician - would probably be convinced forever of its truthfulness.

In a 1967 blurb dealing with the moon's effects on birth rate, the _Lancet_ treats us to:

The extra light can be ruled out as a cause: the last time New Yorkers demonstrated an unexpectedly vigorous procreative urge they were stimulated, not by the bright romance of a silvery moon, but by the stygian darkness of electric-power cuts [4].

(By the way, there seems to have been a fair amount written about moon babies around that period.)

That appears to be all the _Lancet_ had to say about it, but the _American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology_ added its bit in 1968, when Lyle B. Borst, a professor of physics and astronomy, identified August 7, 1966 (270 days after the blackout) as "a very special day": he looked at the birth rates from August 1-12, and found that the number of babies born on the 7 was one-third over the mean [5].

Eventually, an article in the same journal disputed the data, and found nothing exceptional about the August 7 birth rate [6]. It was also pointed out that the gestation period wasn't universally agreed to be 270 days, and that the baby boom would have been distributed over a period of several days, not a single day. And other stuff. (The author of this article finds evidence for a _drop_ in conception around the time of the blackout, but concedes that his evidence isn't conclusive.)

Udry's report was published the following month.

A later letter makes it clear that Borst was attempting to correlate conception rates with various Important Events such as the Cuban missile crisis (drop) and Pearl Harbor (rise) [7]. Something of a hobby of his, I guess.

Ulo Melton

Tommy insists the blackout triggered wild parties in the Pipes, and the sewergator hatch rate subsequently soared. He'd like to see anybody prove otherwise.

[1] Udry, J. R. The effect of the great blackout of 1965 on births in New York City. _Demography_. 1970. 7(3). 325-7.

[2] Tochin, M. _New York Times_. August 10-12, 1966.

[3] <http://snopes.simplenet.com/sex/pregnant/blackNN.htm>, where NN = 01-04. 01-03 are the _Times_ articles, and 04 is Udry's article.

[4] Annotations. Tides and babies. _Lancet_. September 2, 1967. 505.

[5] Borst, L. B. Natality and the blackout. _American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology_. 1968. 101(3). 422-3.

[6] Menaker, W. Evidence for a drop in conceptions in the big blackout. _American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology_. 1970. 107(5). 804-6.

[7] James, William H. and Borst, L. B. Coorespondence. _American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology_. 1971. 111(8). 1123-4.