Impact of parents’ employment on newborns birth weight

Objective: To determine impact of parents’ employment on newborn’s birth weight. Methods: From the database of Children’s Health Cards an analysis was made of birth weight in six regional hospitals in Croatia for 3.072 newborns according to the employment of their parents. Comparison of the ratio of employed and unemployed mothers was made according to maternal age, complications in pregnancy, gestational age, high and low birth weight.
Results: Newborns from employed parents have a higher birth weight comparing to newborn from unemployed parents (p<0.001).
The difference is statistically significant for the employment of the father (p<0.001), mother (p<0.001), one (p<0.001) or both parents (p<0.001) compared to unemployed parents. Term newborns of employed parents also have higher birth weight compared to term newborns of unemployed parents (p<0.001). Newborn birth weights of one or two unemployed parents do not differ significantly (p>0.05), but are significantly higher than the birth weights of two unemployed parents (p<0.001). Employed mothers have more frequent births of macrosome newborn (p<0.001), significantly less frequent (p<0.001) low birth weight newborn (<2500 g) than unemployed mothers. Employed mothers have a higher number of complications in pregnancy than unemployed (p=0.002).
Unemployed mothers have more frequent preterm births than employed mothers (p=0.027). Conclusion: Newborns of employed parents have significantly higher birth weight than newborns of unemployed parents.
Keywords: EMPLOYMENT; PREGNANCY; BIRTH WEIGHT; INFANT, NEWBORN
Category: Clinical observations - professional paper
Volume: Vol. 54, No 2, april - june 2010
Authors: L. Misir-Galić, J. Grgurić
Reference work:
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