Abstract
The consequences of exposure to prenatal maternal anxiety for the development of child temperament were examined in a sample of 120 healthy, 2-year-old children. Prenatal maternal state and pregnancy-specific anxiety (PSA) were measured five times during pregnancy, and maternal state anxiety was measured again at 2 years post partum. Child temperament was measured at 2 years using the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire. The relationship between the trajectory of maternal anxiety across gestation and negative affectivity was evaluated using hierarchical linear growth curve modeling. Higher maternal PSA between 13 and 17 weeks of gestation was associated with increased negative temperament in the children. This association could not be explained by postnatal maternal anxiety, demographic, or obstetric factors. Prenatal maternal state anxiety was not associated with child temperament. These findings demonstrate that PSA early in gestation has a distinctive influence on the developing fetus.
Highlights
The prenatal period is a time of rapid development during which the fetus is especially vulnerable to both positive and negative influences that can have lasting consequences on development across the lifespan
Because of evidence indicating that prenatal psychological distress is associated with increases in negative affect and behavioral reactivity (Huizink et al 2002; O’Connor et al 2002; Davis et al 2004; Van den Bergh and Marcoen 2004; Austin et al 2005; Gutteling et al 2005; Bergman et al 2007) and evidence that negative temperament at ages 2 to 3 is predictive of psychological disorders later in life (Schwartz et al 1999; Prior et al 2000; Dougherty and Klein 2010), we focused on the Negative Affectivity subscale of the Early Child Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ)
Significant changes were observed in the trajectory over gestation of maternal pregnancy-specific anxiety (PSA) (t 1⁄4 3.25, b 1⁄4 0.001, p, 0.01) but not state anxiety ( p 1⁄4 0.25)
Summary
The prenatal period is a time of rapid development during which the fetus is especially vulnerable to both positive and negative influences that can have lasting consequences on development across the lifespan These influences on the fetus have been described as programing: the process by which an insult or stimulus during a sensitive developmental period has a long-lasting or permanent effect (Barker 1998). Fetal organs and organ systems develop rapidly in a specific sequence during gestation and go through distinct periods of rapid cell division (Creasy and Resnik 1994; Cameron and Demerath 2002) During these periods of rapid cell division, organs are especially vulnerable to environmental influences such as stress (Kajantie 2006). The goal of the current study was to explore the influence of prenatal maternal anxiety on the development of child temperament and to investigate whether there were timing effects of exposure to prenatal anxiety on child outcome
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