PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM AND EARLY CHILD-DEVELOPMENT

In a cohort of 532 pregnant women from the general population, it was found by compilation of the results from inter-views, police records, hospital records and social welfare records that 23 mothers and 51 fat hers in 64 families (12%) were suffering from alcoholism/heavy drinkin g. In these 64 families, the mother was an addict in only 13 families, both parents were addicts in 10 families, and in the remaining 41 fam ilies only the father was an addict. Pregnancy, delivery, the newborn child and the child's development until their fourth year of life have been described using a multidisciplinary approach and a longitudinal prospective design. An hypothesis on mental and physical development, and the occurrence of psychopathological symptoms in the children was tested. None of the children of the 13 alcoholic mothers was born with foetal alcohol syndrome, but foetal hazard was indicated by lower bir th weight and a higher rate of perinatal deaths. Children of alcoholic parents had retarded mental development and showed more behavioural p roblems until 4 years of age than controls, but the differences relate d to physical development during the first year of life had then disap peared. Boys were found to be more vulnerable than girls. The conseque nces of behaviour seemed to be more pronounced when both parents were alcoholics. No obvious deviation was found when only the father was ad dicted. Regarding mental development, it appears that factors related to parental alcoholism, including genetic and social factors, and the sex of the child, are of greater importance than the neonatal score on reduced optimality.