Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

difficulties, temper tantrums and beingoverly dependent. As one might expect,Walker argues that since there was noevidence of neurological delay, thesebehaviours may be the result of parentalmanagement, rather than intra-childproblems. Parents are naturally moreanxious about babies who have been bornpre-term and who may have been kept inhospital during their first weeks of life andthis may result in parents being unable toset appropriate limits on their children’sbehaviour. Similarly, Walker’s finding abouthigher levels of separation anxiety seemlikely to relate to ‘vulnerable childsyndrome’ resulting from a continuation ofparents’ early fears for their child’s life. Butcan this account for Walker’s finding thatchildren from manual socio-economicgroups display significantly morebehaviour problems than those fromnon-manual groups? Walker’s researchalso found that mothers from manualgroups had significantly poorer mentalhealth and this finding ties in with thoseof other earlier studies (eg. Richman 1978;Stevenson 1985) which found strongassociations between disturbance inchildren and mothers’ depression.However, Walker did not find that thosemothers with mental health problemswere the ones who had children withbehaviour problems. In her study themothers’ depression tended to be relatedto a recent event (such as bereavement)and most were not expected to be of longduration. Thus Walker’s study suggests thatparents of pre-term children need adviceand support, for example from HealthVisitors, but that other remedies arenecessary to break the link between lowsocio-economic status and children’sbehaviour problems.Poverty and its effects on bodily healthNumerous ill effects have been reportedas linked to poverty for babies and youngchildren. Firstly, it was recognised yearsago that poverty impacts on the mother’shealth, so children are affected evenbefore birth ( Townsend and Davidson1982). Higher infant mortality rates are alsolinked to socio-economic disadvantage(Spencer 2000) and although infantmortality rates have reduced in the‘developed’/minority world, the higherrates are still found among the lessaffluent (Leon et al 1992; Pearl et al 2001).Smoking, risky levels of consumption ofalcohol and caffeine, and other (socioeconomic)factors are found to be moreprevalent among poorer sections ofsociety and it is among these families thatlow birth-weight (LBW) is found mostfrequently (Spencer et al 1999). In fact,according to Spencer (2000), death amongbabies under one year old is said to be themost sensitive indicator of the health of apopulation. In England and Wales, SuddenInfant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is three timeshigher in the lowest socio-economic groupthan in the highest (Basso et al 1997;Woodroffe et al 1993; Zimmer-Gembeckand Helford 1996). Babies with a birthweight of less than 1.5 Kg have a risk ofdeath that is 200 times higher than thatof those weighing 3 Kg or more (Haddad128 EDUCATION ANDSKILLS B I RT H T O T H R E E M AT T E R S