IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.71.8.810_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The relationship between age of mother and child health and development

Author

Listed:
  • Rothenberg, P.B.
  • Varga, P.E.

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between age of mother and children's health and development at birth and at approximately three years of age. The sample is composed of Black and Hispanic women and their firstborn children who were delivered on the wards of a large New York City hospital in 1975. There were no differences between children of teenage and older mothers in terms of prematurity or birthweight, but the children of younger mothers had higher Apgar scores than those of older mothers. Age of mother was not significantly related to hospitalizations, the need to see a physician regularly, or abnormal weight. Although the number of injurious conditions and the incidence of burns were higher among the children of adolescent mothers, the effect of age of mother was not independent of other factors. The children of teenage mothers scored better than those of older mothers on the total Denver Developmental Screening Test, as well as on the Fine Motor sector. These findings thus suggest that when relevant background characteristics are controlled, children of teenage mothers are as healthy and develop as well as children of older mothers.

Suggested Citation

  • Rothenberg, P.B. & Varga, P.E., 1981. "The relationship between age of mother and child health and development," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 71(8), pages 810-817.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.71.8.810_2
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.71.8.810
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.71.8.810
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.71.8.810?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Federico Ciani & Gianna C. Giannelli, 2011. "Surviving the genocide: the impact of the Rwandan genocide on child mortality," Working Papers - Economics wp2011_19.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    2. Sara Oloomi, 2016. "Impact of Paid Family Leave of California on Delayed Childbearing and on Infant Health Outcomes," Departmental Working Papers 2016-08, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    3. Filip Franciszek Karuga & Bartosz Szmyd & Karolina Petroniec & Aleksandra Walter & Agnieszka Pawełczyk & Marcin Sochal & Piotr Białasiewicz & Dominik Strzelecki & Maria Respondek-Liberska & Monika Tad, 2022. "The Causes and Role of Antinatalism in Poland in the Context of Climate Change, Obstetric Care, and Mental Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-13, October.
    4. Mbu Daniel Tambi, 2014. "Modeling The Effects of Mother’s Age at First Birth on Child Health at Birth," Asian Journal of Economic Modelling, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 2(1), pages 1-17, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.71.8.810_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.