Cognitive development in children of adolescent mothers: The impact of socioeconomic risk and maternal sensitivity – Firk et al. - 2018 - Article

What is this article about?

Children of adolescent mothers present a high-risk group for poorer development outcomes. Previous studies have shown that children of adolescent mothers show lower socio-emotional skills and display more externalizing and aggressive behaviors than children of adult mothers. Also their cognitive and language skills are lower when comparing those to children of adult mothers. One explanation for this is that adolescent mothers are more likely to have a lower socioeconomic position, which has been associated with negative developmental outcomes in the offspring. This is probably the result of low cognitive stimulation in the household because of a lower number of toys, books, and other learning opportunities for the child. Another explanation for this is that, because during adolescence the brain is still developing and this impacts maternal parenting behaviors such as maternal sensitivity. Adolescent mothers may be less able to show successful parental emotional control when their children is in distress compared to adult mothers. It has been shown that adolescent mothers show less sensitive, more intrusive and more hostile interactive behaviors and less frequently engage in synchronous interaction with their children. Parenting quality is important for the developmental outcomes of children and therefore differences may arise between children of adolescent and adult mothers. Maternal sensitivity has been shown to be important for children’s attachment and social-emotional development. It has also been associated with children’s cognitive development. It may thus plan an important mediating role between socioeconomic or psychosocial problems and child outcomes.

In this study the goal was to test the impact of adolescent motherhood on child development by investigating the differences in children’s cognitive development between children of adolescent and adult mothers during the first two years of life. It was also examined whether maternal parenting qualities such as maternal sensitivity mediates the developmental differences between children of adolescent and adult mothers. It was also controlled for maternal IQ as this has been shown to affect cognitive development.

What were the used methods?

Adolescent mothers were mothers under 21 years, and adult mothers were mothers above 25 years. Adolescent mothers participated in a 9-months intervention program which had the aim to stimulate mother-child interaction and child development. Child development and maternal sensitivity were assessed three times. There were 99 mothers with one child.

Measures

To measure cognitive development the cognitive subscale of the German Version of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3^rd edition (BSID-III) was used. This is a measure of infant development between 1 and 42 months. It includes 91 items which measure aspects of attention, memory and play. Maternal sensitivity was assessed in a mother-child interaction task which was a 12 min free-play period. During this interaction there was also an age-appropriate stress-situation and this was video recorded. Mothers were told to interact with their child as they normally would do in a free play situation. Mother-child interaction was coded using the sensitivity subscale of the Emotional Availability (EA) scales which range from 1 (very low) to 7 (very high). Socioeconomic risk was assessed by three dichotomous factors: educational problems (no qualifications), financial problems (receiving social welfare), and family problems (single-parent family) which could range from 0 (very low) to 3 (very high).

What can be concluded?

In line with previous studies, it was shown that children of adolescent mothers showed lower cognitive skills than children of adult mothers. The difference emerged between 18 and 24 months of age. Especially between Time Point 2 to Time Point 3 the scores of adolescent mothers decreased which suggest that in this time period sensitivity to negative environmental influences for child cognitive development is high. The first two years of a child can thus be seen as an important period and cognitive functioning during this period is predictive of later cognitive development and academic achievement.

It was found that adolescent mothers differed from adult mothers in terms of parental behaviors. Adolescent mothers were less sensitive than adult mothers during the mother child interaction. Thus, the effect of adolescent parenthood on cognitive development was thus explained in great part by maternal sensitivity. It was also found that the adolescent mothers displayed more socioeconomic problems compared to adult mothers. This did not mediate the effect of adolescent parenthood on cognitive development. It was however found that adolescent motherhood was related to maternal sensitivity which in turn affected child cognitive development. These findings thus support the postulate that life stress which is caused by socioeconomic or psychosocial problems lead to impaired parental emotional, behavioural and relational functioning which in turn leads to less sensitive parenting behaviors. This in turn may lead to chronic stress for children and can affect their brain development. There is thus a need for prevention and intervention programs for adolescent mothers with maternal interactive behavior as the primary focus.