Pregnant Women who Drink Subjects Offspring to Behavior Problems

Filed in archive Pregnancy on November 9, 2007

We've discussed alcohol and pregnancy on this blog a few times. However, according to an article in Archives of General Psychiatry, women who drink while pregnant is more likely to have a child with conduct problems.

What's worse is that every day the pregnant women drinks, she increases the chances for attention and behavior problems in their offspring. The study even suggests the child could be subjected to alcohol disorders and criminal behavior.

I know this topic has debated. But, my suggestion is simple: don't drink.

Brian M. D'Onofrio, Ph.D., of Indiana University, Bloomington, and team looked at information on 4,912 mothers who had enrolled in a national survey in 1979. On a yearly basis up to 1994, and then once every two years until 2004 the mothers answered questions regarding their own substance use during each of their pregnancies. As from 1986, 8,821 of their children were also assessed for behavioral problems once every two years until they were 11 years old.

The mothers' offspring appears to have an increase in conduct problems for every additional day per week that their mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy. The link was still their even after the researchers factored in such variables as the mothers' drug use during pregnancy, her educational level and intellectual ability.

A child whose mother drank alcohol during her pregnancy with him/her has a significantly higher risk of experiencing attention and impulsivity problems, compared to a child whose mother did not drink during her pregnancy. Siblings whose mother consumed alcohol more frequently during one pregnancy had the same level of difficulty with attention and impulsivity.

The researchers wrote "These results are consistent with prenatal alcohol exposure exerting an environmentally mediated causal effect on childhood conduct problems, but the relation between prenatal alcohol exposure and attention and impulsivity problems is more likely to be caused by other factors correlated with maternal drinking during pregnancy."