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Researchers looked at the relationship between pregnancy planning and fertility treatment, and cognitive abilities in children later in life.
Jim Stevenson, Emeritus Professor, School of Psychology, University of Southampton, said:
“This paper addresses two important questions concerning events around conception that might impact on children’s later cognitive development. The first is whether the pregnancy was planned or not and whether the mother was ‘happy’ about this or not. The second is whether assisted conception has a detrimental effect. The study is well conducted and the results carefully analysed. The findings show that the effects of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy and of assisted conception can be explained by the social background differences in the mothers in these groups. The effects of events around conception on the child’s cognitive development up to age 5 are negligible compared to the effects of sociodemographic factors.”
Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford , said:
“This study shows how important it is to take social factors into account when looking at child outcomes. Children from unplanned pregnancies have lower scores on cognitive tests than those from planned pregnancies, but they are also much more likely to come from single parent, low income households. Once this is taken into account, there is no impact of an unplanned pregnancy on children’s development.”
Jean Golding, Emeritus Professor of Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology at the University of Bristol, said:
“This is a well-designed study, analysed appropriately. It will be interesting to see whether the scholastic results when the children are at school mirror these findings.”
‘Effect of pregnancy planning and fertility treatment on cognitive outcomes in children at ages 3 and 5: longitudinal cohort study’ by C Carson et al., published online in the British Medical Journal on 26th July.