Posted on 01/26/2007 8:24:29 PM PST by blam
Mother's rows in pregnancy 'affects IQ of baby'
By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:05am GMT 27/01/2007
Children born to mothers who had relationship problems during their pregnancies have lower than average intelligence and are more prone to anxiety, scientists say.
Women who reported high stress levels in the months before giving birth had babies who scored lower in mental development tests than those whose mothers had calmer pregnancies.
Researchers found that stress caused by rows with or violence by a partner to be particularly harmful.
They believe high levels of the stress hormone cortisol can affect unborn babies by crossing the placenta.
Lead researcher Prof Vivette Glover, a foetal development expert at Imperial College London, said: "We have known for a long time that both genetics and upbringing have an important effect on how a child turns out.
"Our study shows that what happens while the baby is in the womb is also important.
"When we looked at what kind of stress was most significant, we found that if the woman had a partner who was being emotionally cruel to them while they were pregnant it had a really significant effect on their baby's future development.
"The father has a big part to play. The state of their relationship with the mother affects the hormonal and chemical balance in the mother's body, which in turn affects the development of the child's brain."
Prof Glover, who presented her research at a conference of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London yesterday, said there was no way to know from her research whether the delayed mental development detected when the babies were 18 months old continued into later life.
Because of this, it will now be a crime to irritate a pregnant woman. Like that isn't hard to do...
Must be from working in garden, and hoeing corn. :)
Oldest kid: happy-go-lucky. Will be a future game-show host.
Youngest kid (a surprise, born 18 months after her sister, her mom had a terrible time at work, ulcers, and her dad was seriously stressed out over taking care of the sister during the 2nd pregnancy): the most stressed-out 4-year-old I've ever met. She makes Lisa Simpson seem like a cheerleader.
Duh.
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This would be an interesting finding if the study controlled for parental IQ, SES, parental education level, and number of parents raising the child, and still found the effect.
Otherwise, it is probably just picking up extra stress in the lives of parents who have other characteristics which correlate with low child IQ.
Uh, maybe it's because distracted moms can't give proper attention to upbringing? We don't have to blame every functional disorder in the world on diseases, you know.
Such stress might induce these women to eat less healthily, whether it is by depriving them of appetite or tempting them to pack in the comfort food.
Now you've given nervous, first-time, and/or hypochondriac pregnant women one more thing to be stressed out about.
Stressed out moms may make for stressed out babies, but not stupid ones.
Rut-Row...
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