# Are Wednesday's Children Full of Woe? Children's Differences in Personality Are Independent of Day of Birth

## TL;DR

This study finds that the day of the week a child is born does not affect their personality or physical traits, contradicting the nursery rhyme 'Monday's Child'.

## Contribution

The study empirically tests and refutes the claim that birth day influences children's traits as suggested by the nursery rhyme.

## Key findings

- Children's personality and physical traits are not predicted by their day of birth.
- Adjusting for covariates like sex and socioeconomic status did not change the results.
- Nursery rhymes like 'Monday's Child' likely do not influence children's development.

## Abstract

Nursery rhymes, which are rich in literary devices, benefit children's language learning. Less is known about the influence that nursery rhymes' messages may have on children's development. We focused on “Monday's Child,” a popular nursery rhyme that alleges children's day of the week of birth forecasts their differences in personality and physical traits.

Data came from E‐Risk, a UK population representative, longitudinal cohort study of 2232 same‐sex twin children (with 93% retention). We used linear regression models to test whether the day of the week of birth predicted personality and physical traits at ages 5–18 years.

Being born on Monday through Saturday did not predict children's personality and physical traits as implied by the “Monday's Child” rhyme. Being born on Sunday was also not associated with children's traits across measures. These results were unchanged after covariate adjustment (i.e., children's sex, birthweight, and socioeconomic status).

We showed that children's differences in personality and physical traits are independent of their day of the week of birth. These findings suggest that nursery rhymes' messages are unlikely to influence children's development, at least those conveyed by “Monday's Child”.