Pregnant and Stressed May Mean Offspring Who Misbehave: MedlinePlus

Pregnant and Stressed May Mean Offspring Who Misbehave
Not the type of stress but the number of incidents has most effect, study finds




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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_111299.html(*this news item will not be available after 07/21/2011)

By Robert Preidt
Friday, April 22, 2011

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Child Behavior Disorders
Pregnancy
Stress


FRIDAY, April 22 (HealthDay News) -- Women who experience repeated stressful events while pregnant are more likely to have children with behavioral problems, a new study suggests.

Dr. Monique Robinson, a psychologist at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, Australia, and the study's lead author, said that previous research had shown a link between stress during pregnancy and behavior problems in children but that the new study took that further by examining the timing, amount and kinds of stressful events that lead to such problems.

She and her colleagues analyzed data from nearly 3,000 pregnant women who reported stressful events at 18 and 34 weeks of pregnancy. Of those women, about 37 percent reported two or more stress events and nearly 8 percent reported six or more.

Money and relationship problems, job loss, issues with other children, a difficult pregnancy and a death in the family were among the stressful events cited by the women.

The behavior of the women's children was assessed at ages 2, 5, 8, 10 and 14 years.

"What we have found is that it is the overall number of stresses that is most related to child behavior outcomes," Robinson said in a news release from the institute. "Two or fewer stresses during pregnancy are not associated with poor child behavioral development, but as the number of stresses increase to three or more, then the risks of more difficult child behavior increase."

The actual type of stress experienced was found to be less important than the number of stressful events. Whether the stresses occurred early or late in pregnancy did not influence risk, the study reported.

The findings were published online April 18 in Development and Psychopathology.

SOURCE: Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, news release, April 20, 2011

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Pregnant and Stressed May Mean Offspring Who Misbehave: MedlinePlus





Babies' Persistent Fussiness Could Mean Behavioral Woes Ahead
Study links problems in infancy to temper tantrums, aggressive actions and more


URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_111207.html(*this news item will not be available after 07/20/2011)

By Robert Preidt
Thursday, April 21, 2011

Related MedlinePlus Pages

Child Behavior Disorders
Infant and Newborn Development

WEDNESDAY, April 20 (HealthDay News) -- Excessive sleeping, feeding or crying troubles during infancy are associated with a greatly increased risk for behavioral problems later in childhood, research suggests.

Such behavior, which the researchers describe as "regulatory problems," were the focus of an analysis of 22 studies conducted between 1987 and 2006. Data came from 16,848 children, including 1,935 with regulatory problems who were tested.

The researchers found that infants with regulatory problems were more likely to have childhood behavioral problems than were other infants. The most likely childhood behavioral issues for infants with regulatory problems were attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and externalizing problems, such as aggressive or destructive behavior, conduct problems and temper tantrums.

The more types of regulatory problems displayed by an infant, the more likely the child was to exhibit behavioral problems later, according to the study, published online April 20 in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

"Our findings highlight the need for prospective follow-up studies of regulatory disturbed infants and require reliable assessments of crying, sleeping or feeding problems," Mirja Helen Hemmi, of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues wrote in a journal news release.

"The evidence from this systematic review suggests that those with persisting regulatory problems in families with other problems may require early interventions to minimize or prevent the long-term consequences of infant regulatory problems," the study authors concluded.

SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, news release, April 20, 2011
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Babies' Persistent Fussiness Could Mean Behavioral Woes Ahead: MedlinePlus