Consequences of Prenatal substance abuse
Smoking
- Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
- Increased risk for stillbirth
- Low birth weight
- Respiratory problems
- Delayed cognitive development
- Negatively affects child's ability to process speech
- Difficulty distinguishing syllables
- Impaired spatial motor skills
- More difficult to learn (especially from feedback)
- Increased risk for depression
- Increased risk to addiction to nicotine if child starts smoking
- Increases risk of ADHD
- Behavioral problems
Drinking
- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
- Low birth weight
- Decrease in head circumference (affects cognitive ability)
- Trouble learning simple things
- Decrease in chest circumference
- Problems eating and sleeping
- Associated with anxiety disorder and ADHD
- Increased risk for depression
- Increased risk for nicotine, alcohol, and drug dependency later in life
- Behavioral problems
- With continued drinking postpartum, studies have shown that a female child will be at increased risk for child sexual abuse
Illicit Drugs
- Increased rate of prematurity
- Low birth weight
- Retarded intrauterine growth
- Delayed cognitive development
- impaired attention and learning skills
Effects for later...
- Prenatal substance abuse is directly corelated to mothers abusing substances postnatally continuing the negatives effects on child.
- As noted in the causes section of this website, some predictors of prenatal substance abuse is corporal punishment as a child, experiencing physical abuse as a child, and experiencing child sexual abuse as a child. Because many of the negative effects of drinking, smoking, and drug use while pregnant include cognitive delay, this increases the chances for the mother and father to become frustrated with their child, and increases the risk for abuse.
- Because some of the effects include externalizing (violence and aggressive) and internalizing (depression, drug use behavior, self-harm) behaviors, this also increases the chances of child receiving maltreatment from their parents.