Elsevier

Fertility and Sterility

Volume 103, Issue 6, June 2015, Pages 1381-1391
Fertility and Sterility

Views and reviews
Older maternal age and child behavioral and cognitive outcomes: a review of the literature

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2015.04.027Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

The trend toward delayed childbearing is widespread in industrialized nations. Although the physical consequences for offspring in utero and in the prenatal period are well known, the psychologic consequences of older motherhood for offspring have received less attention in the literature. In contrast to the heightened physical risks for offspring, the existing research suggests that children of older mothers are often at lower risk for problem behavioral and academic outcomes compared with offspring of mothers in their teens and twenties. Maternal age is inextricably linked with a complex web of psychosocial variables, and the challenge for future research is to better understand the relative influence of these variables on the relationship between maternal age and offspring outcomes.

Key Words

Maternal age
behavior outcomes
cognitive outcomes
internalizing behavior
externalizing behavior

Cited by (0)

J.E.T. has nothing to disclose.

Supported by a University of Western Australia Completion Scholarship.