Reassessing Parity‐Related Variation in Female Body Morphology: A Matched Analysis in a Contemporary Population
Jooyeon Lee, Jinhee Park · 2026
Read Reassessing Parity‐Related Variation in Female Body Morphology: A Matched Analysis in a Contemporary Population by Jooyeon Lee, Jinhee Park (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13181226.txt.
Description
Lee and Park revisit a classic claim: that childbirth leaves lasting marks on women's body shape. Older comparisons found mothers broader in the belly and hips than women who never gave birth. Using measurements of 1,339 Korean women aged 20 to 39, the authors first repeat the standard comparison, then repeat it after matching mothers and non-mothers on age and body mass.
The unmatched data reproduce the familiar gaps. After matching, nearly all of them shrink to nothing. Only a few proportional ratios tied to weight keep modest differences. The authors conclude that who ends up in each group, rather than childbirth itself, explains most of the supposed signature, and they urge matched designs in body-shape research.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jooyeon Lee, Jinhee Park |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 37 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |