Abstract:
Research on how teenage pregnancy is associated with adverse outcomes of their offspring has yielded conflicting results. In New Zealand particularly, studies examining adverse outcomes in children born to teenage mothers during their first two years of life is limited. This study sought to understand whether the disadvantages seen in the health, well-being and developmental outcomes of children born to teenage mothers in their first 1,000 days, are because of maternal age per se, or whether they can be partially or fully explained by the differences in markers of socio-demographic and economic status of the mothers. The data used to address this research question were obtained from the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal cohort study. Of the 5,967 mothers and children included in the analysis, 280 children were born to teenage mothers. Maternal socio-demographic and economic markers were measured during the prenatal period, and child health, well-being and developmental outcomes were assessed at nine months and two years. The results of the descriptive analyses showed that teenage mothers were both more likely to be economically disadvantaged and their offspring also generally had poorer health, wellbeing and developmental status compared to those born to non-teenage mothers. However, after adjusting for maternal socio-economic measures, only chest infections, breastfeeding, motor development and psychosocial development (negative emotionality and effortful control) remained significantly associated with maternal age when the children were nine months old. At two years, only asthma, language and psychosocial (total difficulty score) development remained significantly associated with the mothers age, in the fully adjusted model, after controlling for differences between SE factors in teenage versus non-teenage mothers. Several SE measures remained significant predictors of poor well-being and development in the mutually adjusted models, including maternal age, indicating that these adverse outcomes were not only attributable to maternal age but also to the sociodemographic and economic backgrounds of the mothers. These findings suggest that government policies related to the prevention of early childbearing remain beneficial given the poorer start to life that children born to young mothers tend to experience overall. However, in order to achieve optimum child health and development outcomes, programs supporting teen mothers also need to recognise the social and economic difficulties that are commonly experienced by most teenage mothers.