Introduction: Although preterm birth represents a risk factor for early mother-infant interactions, few studies have focused on toddlerhood, an important time for the development of symbolic play, autonomous skills, and child's socialization competences. Moreover, no study has looked at the effect of birth weight on mother-child interactions during this period. Expanding on the available litera...

Despite the millenniums-old tradition in Abrahamic circles of removing the foreskin of a penis at birth, the involuntary and aggressive practice of circumcision must not be made an exception to the natural, negative right to self-ownership—a birthright which should prevent a parent from physically harming a child from the moment of birth going forward. This paper will present a natural rights a...

The impact of women's education on fertility is of interest to researchers, particularly in China. However, few studies have provided well-founded assessments of how women's education, workforce experience, and birth control policy jointly affect fertility in China. This study, conducted in Guangdong Province, aimed to analyze how these three factors influenced the timing of births and affected...

Small for gestational age (SGA) is defined as a birth weight and/or birth length below -2 standard deviation scores (SDS), adjusted for gestational age (Clayton et al., 2007). To determine whether a child is born SGA, accurate knowledge of gestational age, accurate measurements of weight and length at birth, and an appropriate reference population to calculate the standard deviation scores are ...

Manystates require children to reachage5byaspecifieddate in thecalendaryear inorder to begin kindergarten. We use birth certificate records from 1999 to 2004 to assess whether parents systematically time childbirth before these eligibility cutoff dates to capture the option value of sending their child to school at a relatively young age, thereby avoiding a year of child care costs. Testing for...

The winter 1993 issue of The Future of Children examined the practice, policy, and research underlying home visiting programs for families with young children. At that time, we estimated that as many as 200,000 children and families were enrolled in home visiting programs whose primary goals were preventive in nature (for example, to prevent preterm or low birth weight births, to promote health...

This study used a prospective adoption design to investigate effects of prenatal and postnatal parent depressive symptom exposure on child hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity and associated internalizing symptoms. Birth mother prenatal symptoms and adoptive mother/father postnatal (9-month, 27-month) symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory in a sample of 192 families...

The payment of child allowances to laborers with large families was widespread in early nineteenth-century England. This paper tests Thomas Malthus's hypothesis that child allowances caused the birth rate to increase. A cross-sectional regression model is estimated to explain variations in birth rates across parishes in 1826-30. Birth rates are found to be related to child allowances, income, a...

OBJECTIVE To assess the risks and benefits of squatting position during second stage of labour and its comparison with the supine position. METHODS The study was conducted at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi from 1st January 1999 to 31st January 2000. A total of two hundred patients of similar ante partum, intrapartum and socio-economic...