Stress during pregnancy affects child’s motor skills
A new study found that mothers who experienced more stressful events during their pregnancies had children with slower motor skills development. Children with low motor competence can have difficulty in everyday life with fine and gross motor tasks such as writing, throwing, and running.
The study, by researchers at the University of Notre Dame Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute, appears in the journal Child Development.
To test the relationship between maternal stress and children’s motor development, researchers followed 2,900 primarily Caucasian Australian mothers. When the women were 18 weeks pregnant, they were asked to complete a questionnaire about stressful events during their pregnancies. These events included financial hardship, losing a close relative or friend, separation or divorce, marital problems, problems with the pregnancy, losing a job, and moving residences. The moms completed the same questionnaire when they were 34 weeks pregnant.
When the children born of those pregnancies were 10, 14, and 17 years old, they were assessed on their overall motor development and coordination using a 10-item movement test. The test measured children’s hand strength as well as their ability to touch a finger to one’s nose and then back to the index finger, distance jump, walk along a line heel to toe, and stand on one foot.
The test also measured their ability to move small beads from one box to another, thread beads onto a rod, tap a finger over 10 seconds, turn a nut onto a bolt, and slide a rod along a bar as slowly as possible.
The study found that children born to mothers who experienced more stressful events during pregnancy scored lower on motor development across all three survey years (ages 10, 14, and 17).
“Given our findings on the importance of mothers’ emotional and mental health on a wide range of developmental and health outcomes, programs aimed at detecting and reducing maternal stress during pregnancy may alert parents and health professionals to potential difficulties and improve the long-term outcomes for these children,” notes Beth Hands, professor of human movement at the University of Notre Dame Australia, who coauthored the study.
Category: Features, Health alert
