Family Dysfunction During Pregnancy Alters Neurodevelopment

Childhood stress is known to have longstanding consequences. To examine why, researchers prospectively obtained parents' assessments of family functioning during pregnancy and, subsequently, ratings of childhood behavior at ages 5 and 10 and MRIs at age 10. Participants were 2583 Dutch children followed from birth, all of the mothers, and 1788 of the fathers.

Ratings by mothers (but not fathers) of poor family functioning during pregnancy were associated with smaller volumes of the hippocampus (a primary outcome) and the lateral occipital lobe (a post hoc finding) and with behavior problems at age 10. The effect of poor prenatal family functioning on behavior problems at age 10 was partially mediated by small hippocampal volume in analyses c…