Timing Your Pregnancy To Get Specific Zodiac Signs Is A Thing Now

Apparently, it’s now a thing for astrology believers to time their pregnancies in such a way that their children are born with a desired “sign.”

Angela Lashbrook, writing for Vice, tells the story of a 30-something North Carolina mom who said she stopped using birth control at a time when she and her husband thought it would bring them a Scorpio. The woman, Mackenzie Warren, purportedly ended up with a Libra due to an early birth.

“We delayed trying for our next by a month, hoping to avoid a Pisces,” Warren said, as neither of them typically get along well with the sign. They were successful: their son is an Aquarius, like his mom.

As a Pisces, I’m slightly offended about that.

Now, don’t get me wrong. One of the oldest forms of astrology is agricultural astrology, which was used by farmers thousands of years ago to guide the planting of crops, so I understand adhering to a tradition. But the astrology practiced today is demonstrably false, as I show in my book, No Sacred Cows: Investigating Myths, Cults, and the Supernatural.

And while belief in this stuff is already silly, choosing to plan a family based on something that’s provably wrong is another story all together.

Plus, to make matters worse, it’s not just one mom doing this. Lashbrook writes:

Because fertility can be difficult to predict, parents aren’t trying for one particular sign over all the rest; rather, they’re hoping a baby on the cusp will fall into one sign rather than the other. “I was due on the cusp of Leo and Virgo. I did all these folklorish things to kickstart my labor for a chill Leo,” said Kimberly Miller, an Aquarius public health cancer researcher in Los Angeles. She grew up with an “anal Virgo mother,” so, though she loved her mom, she hoped to have a child who was a bit more laid-back than a Virgo, who are typified as obsessive perfectionists… Barbara VanDenburgh, an Aquarius and editor in her 30s who’s based in Phoenix, Arizona, said that if she ever gives birth, she would make a serious effort to ensure she didn’t have a Virgo.

There are a lot of reasons why this type of trend might occur – in fact, Lashbrook quotes a professional who studies these issues as saying stress and a lack of control can be contributing factors. But this also appears to be part of a larger trend of people straying away from traditional religions and toward astrology, spirituality, and other supernatural-based systems, which I also cover in No Sacred Cows.

But this trend of delaying births based on the stars’ alignment doesn’t appear to be hurting anyone, as far as I can tell. So, overall, I suppose we will file this one in under “harmless curiosities.”