Elizabeth told me a rather long story yesterday about which children of her acquaintance had birthdays in what month, and then Angela mentioned on Twitter that birthdays in her office were heavily weighted toward certain months, and that got me curious about whether certain birth months are more heavily weighted over the entire population. I could look it up, but then I realized I’m mostly interested in OUR population. And it was fun doing that “Guess what number I’m thinking of” poll awhile back.
So let’s have a poll for “What month were you born?,” to see if we’re evenly distributed around here or not. The poll will be in the righthand margin. As I understand it, those of you reading on mobile devices can’t see it, is that right? Is that why some people put their poll votes in the comments section instead of in the poll? I poked around but don’t see any way to fix that issue, other than “Go home and take the poll on your computer.” (If anyone else has solved it, let me know and I’ll see if I can solve it the same way.) [Poll closed; see results below.]
[Edit: Ah ha! Jessica‘s comment sounds like exactly what I need! Let’s try THAT: now the poll MAY OR MAY NOT be in the post itself!] [Edit again: No. I see it in html, but not in the post. Continuing to work on it.] [Nope, still not working. I’ve read half a dozen posts describing how to do it, but all of them describe an iframe situation I don’t see in my own html. In the meantime, several commenters have mentioned that if they scroll down, they can click on “view web version” and see the poll that way.]
Poll results for “What month were you born?” (1110 votes total):
Maybe this is interesting to you, too.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/most-common-birthdays-infographic_n_1521426.html
Sarah- Neat!
I was just thinking about this because we have six birthday parties to attend in the next nine days. February through June is very birthday heavy for us, and I feel like we should adjust our budget accordingly. We never do, and I’m always like, MAN what is UP with all of these birthdays.
We’ve just gotten through kid friend birthday season here. Our family, however, is almost equally spread out. We’ve got March, June, September, and December.
I was able to vote from my phone after I changed to “view as web version” at the bottom of the page.
I did the poll (I’m a July baby, myself). But it seems to me, in this family the majority of the birthdays fall between the end of September until the middle of November.
I have heard that the Sept.-Nov. birthday thing was because of New Year’s Eve, winter weather, and Valentine’s Day.
I will say, Liam’s birthday is May 4th, and we always have a helluva time scheduling his bday party around other bday parties and spring events and whatnot. It seems like there are a LOT of people with small children born in the six weeks from mid-April to the end of May around here. I believe Henry’s birthday falls in there, so maybe you know what I’m talking about. Spring is a busy busy time.
I answered in the poll for myself, but the vast majority of my family AND friends are September babies. I have a two-week stretch wherein there’s a birthday EVERY OTHER DAY.
Looks pretty even to me; but there are an awful lot of people I know born in October, it seems to me.
On my phone, if I scroll to the very bottom of the page and hit the “view web version” link I can see all the stuff on the side. … If that works for anyone else. Tracy
Sept was the it month for births in my grade – I am 30- big snows in December 1981. Like, 40/100 kids were September birthdays.
I don’t know if you saw my Should it Stay Monday posts with the poll right in the post? Those were Blogger polls, but I googled around and figured out how to move them from the sidebar to the actual post. That way people could vote within google reader or on their phone.
I was born in March, exactly 8 months, 29 days after my parents were married in 1953.
The clusters of birthdays I’ve noticed in my circles are February, late August/early September & October. Now that I have a child with a May birthday I know TONS of April/May kids though and I have a little bit of a theory that April/May/June babies are often planned by parents working off of an academic calendar.
My only big goal when planning my own children’s birthdays (to the extent possible) has been to avoid December as I have never been a fan of my birthday, sandwiched between Christmas & New Year’s.
I find this sort of stuff fascinating! In my family growing up our birthdays were spread out over the year- Jan, Feb, May, June, Sept, Oct, Dec. In my married family we’re similarly spread out- Feb, March, May, Sept, Dec. But in my sister’s family they’re all grouped together- Nov, 3 in Dec, Jan (okay, and one outlier in Sept.)
I always felt sorry for my spring- and summer-birthdayed friends in school because they were so much younger than we fall babies…
Yes, November is a glorious month to be born. It’s been lending a sense of superiority to my middle child ego since at least 1995!
My siblings and I all have birthdays within 3 weeks of one another, mine in late september and theirs in early and mid October. Nine months after christmas/new year.
Hmmm. I suspected August (the month of my birth) would be very low in the poll because it seems I meet very few people born in that month. Also, when I was growing up and birthstones were a big deal to girls and high school class rings usually had your birthstone, the lovely peridot of August was rarely seen. While it is on the low end of the poll, it isn’t as low as I thought it would be!
Well…I am shocked. The graphic in the link Sarah provided shoots my experience out of the water. Not only is August a big month, my actual birth date in August is ranked in the top 20! Where were all these people when I felt like the only person who had a peridot in my class ring instead of the beautiful sapphire?!
My daughter and husband are Feb babies. My middle son and I are September babies, and my youngest is October.
My office summer babies…and February. Random, yet true. : )
Personally, I tend to be friends with lots of August and September babies.
Our family has heavy concentrations of birthdays in March and September with some smatterings of birthdays in January, February, June, and August.
I’m looking at the poll now with about 600 votes and everything is oddly…even. Huh.
Really interesting poll. I’m wondering what your friend does because this got me thinking about the book “Outliers” which talks about the importance of birth month. That whole book was fascinating to me BTW. Can’t wait to see the final results!
OMG! Swistle mentioned me! *faints*
So interesting. My office has around 50 people and you would think that would be enough to see a somewhat even distribution like we’re seeing in your poll but that’s not at all the case. We have 3 months with 7-8 birthdays and 2 with only 2; the rest are fairly evenly divided. Perhaps Aquarians are just more attracted to my line of work. :)
There are six people in my immediate family and we are January, March, May, June, October and November, no repeats! I am one of four kids and the only one born in March, my three siblings are July. July is a crazy month for me, because one of my sisters in law is July too, but I don’t know how that figures into anything, except I am broke by the end of it, ha!
Late July/early Aug was usually a Halloween conception… I have 2 children with those birthdays… my youngest is a mid-January Birthday but supposed to arrive in early February…
My hubby is the youngest of 7… the first 3 September, october, and November.. the last 4 .. all january… turns out his dad’s birthday is 9 months earlier.. can someone say Belated present??
My birthday and my dads, are in january, my girls in December.. so we are pretty busy Dec-January..
It would be interesting to find out which of your readers are Northern Hemisphere and which are Southern, so we could see if seasonality was an influence or not. Then we just need another poll to categorise by holidays celebrated, and then… never mind!
My (English) family has heaps of birthdays in the August – October months, but here in my New Zealand office, there seem to be lots over December and January.
According to the graphic in Sarah’s link, my birthday (Nov 24) is super uncommon, but my brother’s (Nov 9) is substantially more popular.
What I find interesting is that he was born 2 days before his due date, and I was 2 weeks late. If we’d both been born on our due dates, we’d have been a day apart and would both have had more common birthdays.
(Why yes, we WERE probably both Valentine’s Day babies. My parents got a lot of flack about that from my uncles.)
Growing up it seemed everybody I knew and their sister was born in October (including myself and my sister!) Things have evened out now…but March-May is pretty concentrated and October is still going strong.
From Wikipedia…
“More recently October 5 and 6 have taken over as the most frequently occurring birthdays.[12]”
This makes me sad. (My birthday is Oct 5.) I knew October was a slightly more common birthday month, but to have MY SPECIAL DAY be the most common?! It’s similar to finding out that name I chose for my daughter (Ava) was not in fact a nice slightly unusual name but COMMONER THAN AIR in elementary schools right now.
Our family is birthday dense in April & May. It ranges from the littles to the grandmas.
I’ve always noticed a lot of November birthdays – nine months after Valentine’s Day! And a lot of September – nine months after New Year’s!
And for what it’s worth, my birthday is April but I was due June 7th.
My husband was due 7/6 but came 6/7 instead – his mom says he was dyslexic. :)
This is fascinating. My cousins birthdays are all within 2 weeks of each other, and I always joke that my Aunt must only be fertile one time of year. And the same thing with my cousin–3 of her 4 kids are September babies. My family is spread throughout the year, but on my husband’s side, my husband, my brother in law, my niece, my SIL and myself all fall within 6 weeks of each other. I always feel bad for my MIL to try and remember us all :)
I love the stripe across the heatmap from the huffington post article at Day 13. I wonder if it is statistically significant? As the parent of a child born on a Friday the 13th, I suspect that people are much less inclined to schedule a C-section or be induced on the 13th of the month. I wonder if that bias can be seen on the 13th in every month of every year or if it is just the accumulation of parents avoiding 13ths that occur on a Friday.