For those who thought that confinement would leave couples with little else to do but procreate, there was a surprise: not a baby boom but quite the opposite.

Studies show that the United States is facing the steepest decline in births in a century, and in some parts of Europe the decline is even steeper.

When Frederike moved in with her parents to care for an elderly relative at the beginning of the pandemic, she considered it a gift, an opportunity to spend time with her family.

But within a few months, the 33-year-old German began to feel a deep sense of loss.

Frederike is single and realized that the pandemic was robbing her of the chance to meet someone and start a family.

"Time is very precious right now and my life has been put on pause," he says.

He tried online dating, but going out in the winter in freezing temperatures is not conducive to romance.

Now, depressed, the same thought obsessively swirls in her head: "When this is over, I'm going to be infertile".

"I feel in the years when I can have a child."

For those who study population, the drop in births was not a revelation.

"Seeing how bad the pandemic was, I'm not surprised," says Philip N Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.

"But it's still shocking to see something like this happen in real time."

In June of last year, economists at the Brookings Institution in the United States estimated that births in the United States would fall by between 300,000 and half a million children.

At the same time, a survey of birth plans in Europe showed that 50% of people in Germany and France who had planned to have a child in 2020 were going to postpone it.

In Italy, 37% said they had abandoned the idea altogether.

A report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates an 8% drop in births for the month of December.