Daniel Gadegbeku PSY 241 FJWO1 Steven Withrow Low Birth Weight Birth rate is the body weight of a baby at its birth, and low birth rate is the weight of an infant of less than 5 pounds. The primary cause of low birth rate is premature birth that is being born before 37 weeks gestation; a baby born early has less time in the mother's uterus to grow and gain weight, and much of a fetus's weight is gained during the latter part of the mother's pregnancy. So the basic cause of low birth weight is premature birth. Also another cause of low birth weight is intrauterine growth restriction. This kind of cause occurs when a baby does not grow well in the utero because of problems with the placenta, or the mother's health or birth defects.
Newborns develop many diseases in their early life because of their low weight. A baby born small or large for gestational age (either of the two extremes) is thought to have an increased risk of obesity in later life but it was also shown that this relationship is fully explained by maternal weight. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_mass some diseases in the early life include Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). This is a breathing problem in babies born before 34 weeks. This protein that newborns do not have is small air sacs in the lungs that keep them from collapsing.
Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of school, remain unmarried, and live in poverty, their children are more likely to be born at low birth weight, grow up poor, live in single-parent households, experience abuse and neglect, and enter the child welfare system. Daughters of teen mothers are more likely to become teen parents themselves and sons of teen mothers are more likely to be incarcerated (Hoffman, 2006). All of this can be linked to the teenager’s lack of access to care, fear and misinformation (Brown, 2010). Demographics Nationwide in 2006, 750,000 women younger than twenty became pregnant. The pregnancy rate was 71.5 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19.
It is clear that postnatal maternal depression can impair maternal care and may be associated with delayed social, behavioral, cognitive, and physical development in growing children. There also is evidence that adolescent children of depressed fathers are likelier to experience psychopathology. This longitudinal cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), postulated that paternal depression postnatally would be associated with a heightened risk of behavioral and emotional problems at age 3.5 years. Participants included 13,351 mothers and 12,884 fathers, all of them evaluated 8 weeks postnatally using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). The fathers were again assessed when their children were 21 months old.
A sizeable portion of these children lived in middle-class families that could not afford private health insurance or from families near or below federal poverty income limits that did not enroll in Medicaid (Smith, 2008). To address the number of uninsured children, Congress enacted a children health insurance scheme that
In 2008, 41% of births were covered by Medicaid, with an average cost of $12.631 per child/woman. With Planned Parenthood and birth control readily available, the number of unplanned pregnancies would decline saving taxpayer’s money and supporting the rising problem of children/women on welfare. A third world argument in favor of birth control is a slashing number of abortions performed for unwanted pregnancies. As of 2006, nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States alone were unplanned pregnancies. Of those unplanned pregnancies, 43% were terminated through abortion.
A weakness in Hodges and Tizard study is that the parents may not have invested the same time emotionally. The biological parent in Hodges and Tizard sample may not have been as interested in their children which are why they were less attached. Although the Czech twins suffered from privation this did demonstrate that a person without a bond could then go on a function adequately in society. Rutter’s study showed that recovery from extreme privation can be achieved given adequate care, although adoption, within the age of two, was still within Bowlby’s sensitive period. The longer the period of privation the harder to
In “The Joys of Parenthood Reconsidered,” Simon talks about how parents go through depression more than childless adults do. Society in America believes that an adult cannot be happy unless they eventually have children because it creates a purpose to life. Men and women are now having children at older ages but the majority (eighty percent) of adults are eventually having kids. We encourage people who cannot have children to go through in vitro fertilization or to adopt, but why do they need to have a child? Can’t they be happy without any children?
The nation’s economy has been affected, because of poorer health, with a 65 to 130 billion estimated annual cost. Some estimate that nearly nine million children are uninsured in the country. The lack of insurance for children causes their caretakers to seek less medical care for them, leaving conditions untreated and resulting in improper development. Adults are at a higher risk of developing chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease. The article has considered four possible solutions to the health care dilemma.
Most babies born with a birth weight less than 2,500 grams and this called the low birth weight. The Indigenous mother are twice as likely to be of low birth weight however the babies born to non-indigenous mothers are more likely to be healthy. Low birth weight babies are more level to ill health problems during childhood and this may be more risk when the baby become older. Many reasons, the indigenous mother likely to have a baby’s birth weight might include socioeconomic disadvantages, the size and age of mother, the mother’s health issue, smoking and other risk behaviours also the period time of pregnancy (Australian Institute 2012). The nutritional state of Indigenous people is unfair by socioeconomic disadvantage and environmental.