Light drinking during pregnancy won’t harm children’s development
A child’s development will not be harmed by the ‘light’ consumption of alcoholic drinks during pregnancy.
New research from University College London, published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, finds that some light drinking whilst pregnant will not harm a child’s behavioural or intellectual development.
Whilst previously published research came to a similar conclusion, researchers wanted to rule out any possible delayed effects in older children.
Data was analysed from the UK Millennium Cohort Study which has been tracking 11,513 children born between 2000/02.
The drinking patterns of mothers during pregnancy and their child’s behaviour at the age of three and five was assessed.
Boys were found to be more likely to have developmental problems than girls overall, displaying behaviour issues such as hyperactivity.
Girls were found to be more prone to emotional issues.
Children of heavy drinkers were more likely to be hyperactive and have both behavioural and emotional problems than those born to mothers who did not drink during pregnancy.
No evidence was found to suggest light drinking would compromise a child’s development and were even 30 per cent less likely to have behavioural problems than children whose mothers did not drink during pregnancy.
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A study of 1,383 mothers by FertilityFlower.com, finds that one in five women occasionally drank alcohol whilst pregnant and 7 per cent continued to smoke.
A two per cent of mums polled got themselves drunk whilst pregnant, though 53 per cent felt that getting drunk whilst pregnant was ‘disgusting’.
Of the 74 per cent of mothers who felt that smoking and drinking whilst pregnant is bad parenting, one person felt it should be made illegal to consume harmful toxins whilst pregnant.