Infants of adolescent mothers: perinatal, neonatal, and infancy outcome.

Abstract

Data from 2 studies are analyzed to investigate the social and medical consequences of adolescent parenting: 1) neonatal data on 55711 pregnancies from the Collaborative Perinatal Project of the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and 2) neonatal data on 4000 pregnancies from the University of Kansas Medical Center. In an extensive national review a relationship was found between maternal age and the weight and gestational age of the fetus; mothers under 18 years of age had shorter mean gestational ages but their infants were appropriate weights for gestational age. Mothers over 35 years tended to have infants who were smaller than those born to 14-24 year olds and they were more frequently premature. In other studies black adolescent mothers consistently had a higher frequency of very low birth weight infants and had significantly fewer infants 4000 gm or over than 20-29 year old blacks. Adolescent white mothers had a greater number of infants under 2500 gm than the older white mothers but the number of adolescent white mothers delivering very low birth weight infants was too small for meaningful comparisons. The incidence of medical complications of pregnancy was 15% for all white mothers and 15.4% for white mothers under age 19. The incidence of complicating behavioral conditions such as low prepregnancy weight poor weight gain in pregnancy lack of prenatal care smoking drug addiction and alcoholism was 47.3% in adolescent mothers who gave birth to infants with complications. In the Kansas City study when maternal and fetal growth retarding factors are taken into consideration no biologic disadvantage appears to be unique to adolescent mothers. Other findings also fail to support the latter theory but do suggest that amniotic fluid infections are correlated with the excessive preterm deliveries recorded in the youngest mothers. Some studies showed: 1) total duration of hospitalization is slightly longer in infants of adolescent mothers but this may be related to greater financial and transportation problems among adolescents; and 2) infants born to adolescent mothers are at an increased risk of dying of sudden infant death syndrome a risk that is significantly increased in the 2nd or 3rd child of a mother under age 20. Some long range prospects for infants of adolescent mothers indicate that the intellectual developmental and educational expectations for these children is lower than for those born to older mothers but the former are usually poor and live in extended disrupted families with multiple caregivers. Parenting skills and maternal readiness may be the critical determinants in the long-range outcome of infants born to adolescent mothers.