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Childhood hardships linked to pregnancy troubles

Childhood hardships make one vulnerable to pregnancy problems during adulthood.

Childhood hardships linked to pregnancy troubles

Childhood hardships make one vulnerable to pregnancy problems during adulthood.

To see if hardships faced during childhood have any impact on pregnancy complications, researchers followed 4,865 American women who had experienced at least one hardship during childhood and had given birth at least once by the age of 41 years. Hardships included family problems with alcohol, fathers who didn't take an interest in the child's schooling, family financial difficulties and neglect.

Most of the women in the study had their first child in their 20s, and most had one, two or three children. In their first pregnancy, 7.9 percent of the women gave birth to a baby whose weight was below normal, and 7.5 percent gave birth more than three weeks early. About 39 percent of the women smoked at some point during their first pregnancy. Overall, 5.8 percent of all pregnancies resulted in babies with low birth weight and 6.5 percent of the women delivered before 37 weeks of gestation.

When results were examined by timing of exposure, family structure hardships and violence / mental health hardships most strongly influenced the birth outcomes if they happened in adolescence. Overall, the highest risk for both low birth weight and pre-term birth was in those who had multiple hardships in adolescence only, but this was also a very small group.

The findings suggest that mothers who have experienced childhood hardship are more likely to smoke during pregnancy. They also more often give birth to low birth weight babies who are born prematurely, but this association could be mainly due to health behaviour and associated social class.
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