"Wake me up when September ends," sang Green Day, and you can understand why: the nights start drawing in, school starts up again and summer is most assuredly over.
But for anyone whose birthday falls during the ninth month, it just might be a different story. A new study has suggested that being born in September might be the best possible start that one can get in life.
Researchers from the University of Toronto, the University of Florida and Northwestern University in Illinois have concluded, after studying reams and reams of data, that September babies are the most likely to succeed. They collated details from public schools across the US state of Florida and deduced that children born in September were less likely to be sent to jail, more likely to feel confident and far more likely to attend college.
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The positioning of the school year is the most obvious factor regarding the significance of that month. Children born in September are obviously the oldest in the academic year and thus are the most developed - a crucial factor during the years of puberty, for example.
As they are better developed, they are better equipped to succeed and success grows confidence, begetting more success. Commensurately, the least successful group academically speaking are those born in August, who are the least developed.
There has long been an argument in sports for splitting age groups by half-year rather than academic year due to exactly this problem.
So if you're planning a baby, make sure that you plan a lot harder in the month of December - it'll be cold outside anyway and there's not really anything decent on telly until Christmas anyway.
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Furthermore, the number of babies born in September is also thought to be a major strain on the NHS. Under the theory that the majority of children are conceived at Christmas and therefore born in September or October, a midwife in London recently lost her rag on Twitter at the number of babies she was having to help out.
"How is it only the 5th of September? I can't take 25 more days of this. If you know or love a midwife, PLEASE STOP SHAGGING AT CHRISTMAS," she wrote on the social media platform. Midwives are rushed off their feet in September, with the most popular date of the year for births being 26 September.
Ironically, Christmas itself is home to the days of the year on which the least babies are born. So at least all the midwives get to spend the festive period with their presumably well-delivered families.
Source: Shortlist