Abstract
A prospective cohort study (Copenhagen Perinatal Birth Cohort 1959-61) of 7,222 persons was used in order to explore the association between the social and health situation during pregnancy and the global quality of life (QOL) of the adult child 31-33 years later. Two sets of questionnaires were used with one filled out by physicians during pregnancy and one filled out by the adult children 31-33 years later. The questionnaires included mother's situation during pregnancy and global QOL of the child at follow-up: Well-being, life satisfaction, happiness, fulfilment of needs, experience of lifes temporal and spatial domains, expression of lifes potentials and objective measures. The only indicators to have clear connections with a reduced quality of life were the cases of mother's with syphilis (8.5%), mother's congenital malformations (8.8%), low social group (6.9%) and failing contraception (3.8%). The results obtained repudiate the common notion and hypothesis that the mother's situation during pregnancy is highly important for the quality of life that the child experience as an adult. This suggest that the aspects important for quality of life later on are not found solely in early conditions, but instead more dependent on later attitude towards life of that specific person.
Highlights
The concept of quality of life (QOL) has become a topic of discussion both in the field of health and social welfare and in political debate[1-15]
It became increasingly apparent that illness is closely related to the individual’s perception of a good life, which made us explore indicators related to quality of life that might be of broad importance for the prevention and treatment of diseases
No significant associations were found between global QOL and the mother’s age, height and blood type, and only a small significant association was found in relation to the mother’s weight, whereas those who were born of overweight mothers had a slightly smaller quality of life (1.7% less than average)
Summary
The concept of quality of life (QOL) has become a topic of discussion both in the field of health and social welfare and in political debate[1-15]. The concept of quality of life and living “a good life” has been the subject of a number of philosophical and psychological studies[11-18]. Enhancing the quality of life is more and more considered to be an objective in the treatment and prevention of illness together with the provision of psychosocial support. During the past 14 years, the Quality of Life Research Centre in Copenhagen has investigated more than 11,000 Danes and revealed a series of strong associations between QOL and different factors in our lives[19-25]. It became increasingly apparent that illness is closely related to the individual’s perception of a good life, which made us explore indicators related to quality of life that might be of broad importance for the prevention and treatment of diseases
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