The Influence of Maternal Age, Employment Status, and Parenthood Status on Children's Cognitive Development

NCT00361829 | Completed

• 2 other identifiers: 88003288-CH-0032
• Study Type: observational
• Target: 2,355
• Locations: 3 countries
• Sites: 3

Brief Summary

Research and theory tend to agree when suggesting that certain activities done by mothers have both immediate and delayed consequences for children's mental development in the first years of life. The everyday interaction between an infant and a caregiver can be broken down into many categories. There are data linking both of these types of interaction to the mental development of children. The study will focus on the extent to which maternal characteristics (age, employment status, parenthood status, and birth order of the child) influence the relation between maternal social and didactic caregiving and the social and mental development of children. Mother-infant interaction will be observed when the infants are 5 months old. When the children are 20 months old, measures of toddler function (e.g., ability to play and language development) and maternal behavior (e.g., encouragement of attention to the environment and I.Q.) will be obtained. When the children are 48 months old, researchers will measure preschooler psychosocial functioning (e.g., I.Q., cognitive and social competencies) and maternal behavior (e.g., "scaffolding"). Understanding the relation between children's experiences as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers and their eventual intellectual and social functioning is an essential part of normal developmental research.\<TAB\>...

Conditions

Child Development

Keywords

Childhood Growth and Development; Natural History

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Measures of child adaptive functioning

  Measures of child adaptive functioning

  5, 20,and 48 months, 10 years, 14 years, 18 years, and 23 years

Study Arms (1)

Ecologic/Community

Married women, infants, caregivers, Japanese-American, Argentine-American

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 5 Months - 23 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64)
• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Mother-infant interaction will be observed when the infants are 5 months old. When the children are 20 months old, measures of toddler function (e.g., ability to play and language development) and maternal behavior (e.g., encouragement of attention to the environment and I.Q.) will be obtained. When the children are 48 months old, researchers will measure preschooler psychosocial functioning (e.g., I.Q., cognitive and social competencies) and maternal behavior (e.g., "scaffolding").

You may qualify if:

• All subjects are normal volunteers.
• At initial recruitment, all mothers will be married women living in intact families with healthy, full-term, first-born infants. Most will be living in intact families.
• To the extent that the adolescent sample diverges from sample criteria with respect to marital status and SES, appropriate controls will be used.
• Subjects in the Argentine-American and Japanese-American project will be selected to represent families high vs low on appropriate measures of acculturation.
• The healthy second born infants of 80 mothers already enrolled in the protocol will also be recruited into the sample at the time of their birth. These infants will be selected to comprise four equal groups based on the gender composition of the sibling dyad: male/male, male/female, female/female, and female/male.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): lead

Study Sites (4)

National Institutes of Health Clinical Center

Bethesda, Maryland, 20892, United States

Location

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro-Participants Homes

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Location

University of Bamenda, Cameroon-Participants Homes

Bamenda, Cameroon

Location

University of Saskatchewan-Participants Homes

Saskatchewan, Canada

Location

Related Publications (3)

• Rowe A. Characteristics of hospital care. Nurs Times. 1969 Oct 23;65(43):1376-7. No abstract available.

  PMID: 5823787 BACKGROUND

• Kuiumdzhieva A, Denchev D. [ATP yield from yeasts of the genera Candida and Torulopsis cultured in a chemostat on a methanol medium]. Acta Microbiol Bulg. 1984;15:50-5. No abstract available. Bulgarian.

  PMID: 6541423 BACKGROUND

• Smith WL, Egle JL Jr, Adams MD. Adrenergic receptors in the nucleus tractus solitarii of the rat. Eur J Pharmacol. 1982 Jun 16;81(1):11-9. doi: 10.1016/0014-2999(82)90596-9.

  PMID: 6126366 BACKGROUND

Related Links

• NIH Clinical Center Detailed Web Page

Study Officials

• Diane L Putnick, Ph.D.

  Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: observational
• Observational Model: ECOLOGIC OR COMMUNITY
• Time Perspective: PROSPECTIVE
• Sponsor Type: NIH
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: August 8, 2006
• First Posted: August 9, 2006
• Study Start: February 17, 1988
• Last Updated: May 7, 2026

Record last verified: 2026-01-13

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

BR (1); US (1); CA (1)