New Study Links Children's Poor Speaking Skills to Teen Mothers

Children born to teen mothers have been shown to have less developed speaking skills by age five than children born to older mothers, according to research published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Dr. Julia Morinis, the lead author and researcher in the Center for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael's Hospital in Canada, found a connection between social factors and the development of speaking skills children.

"We don't believe that having a baby in your teens is the cause of underdeveloped speaking skills," Morinis said. "It's likely that being a teen mother is a risk factor that indicates poorer circumstance for development opportunities in some cases."

Morinis said teen mothers' limited ability to secure well-paying jobs and limited opportunities for education, as well as single parenthood, "have a significant negative impact on childhood development."

She also pointed to parental involvement as a factor affecting child's speech abilities.

Referring to children born to teen mothers versus older mothers, Morinis said, "most differences in non-verbal and spatial abilities between these two groups of children can be attributed to significant sociodemographic inequalities in circumstance. But for verbal ability, there seems to be more going on."

For her study, Morinis used data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a long-term, nationally representative study of nearly 19,000 children born in Britain between 2000 and 2001. These children were assessed for reasoning skills and and intelligence when they were 5 years old.