Childhood disadvantage and the planning of pregnancy

The relationship between the planning of pregnancy and subsequent childhood disadvantage in the areas of health, education and family conditions was studied prospectively to the age of 3 years in a birth cohort of New Zealand children. Unplanned children showed a systematic pattern of disadvantage in nearly all areas studied. However, multivariate analysis suggested that the apparent association between the planning of pregnancy and subsequent childhood disadvantage arose largely from a series of social and contextual factors associated with pregnancy planning practices. In particular, unplanned children tended to come from socially disadvantaged home backgrounds and these backgrounds were independently associated with an increased risk of childhood disadvantage. Further, a disproportionate number of unplanned children were ex-nuptial and the levels of disadvantage experienced by these children tended to reflect more their ex-nuptial status than the direct effects of failure to plan the pregnancy. It is concluded that when the effects of maternal social background and the nuptial status of the child are taken into account, the effects of planning of pregnancy on levels of childhood disadvantage for this birth cohort were almost negligible.