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Life Course Dynamics after Preterm Birth. Protective Factors for Social and Educational Transitions, Health, and Prosperity

Subject Area Developmental and Educational Psychology
Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
Term from 2017 to 2021
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 360330815
 
Final Report Year 2021

Final Report Abstract

PremLife (Life Course Dynamics after Preterm Birth–Protective Factors for Social and Educational Transitions, Health, and Prosperity) investigates protective and resilience factors that help preterm born children to achieve better life outcomes across the lifespan. To identify the protective and resilience factors among preterm born children the PremLife team is conducting hypothesis-driven research that focuses on: (1) academic skills; (2) personality characteristics; (3) family and social context features; and (4) macro-level characteristics (including differences in the societal contexts between countries and epochs). Further, PremLife investigates (5) whether parental stress increases the likelihood of preterm birth; and (6) what role preterm birth plays in intergenerational transmission of social inequality. Our findings show that preschool math skills are more strongly associated with later performance at school in preterm than in term born children. Thus, early math education might be a potential key factor leading to resilience in education outcomes in preterm children. Further results indicate that personality characteristics including optimism and self-control, behavioural characteristics including physical activity as well as family socio-economic status are protective factors for mental health and wellbeing in preterm children. However, while these factors are related to positive outcomes, these associations are not stronger in preterm children than in their term born counterparts. Among the macro-system variables that could benefit preterm children, school systems without performance tracking (e.g. in Finland and the UK) appear to be beneficial for preterm children's chances to attend higher education compared to a system with early school tracking (as e.g. in Germany). A second macro-system variable under investigation involves the treatment of preterm children in the neonatal phase, which has improved since the 1950s. In line with that improvement, our findings show that the association of preterm birth with general cognitive abilities (IQ) in childhood has decreased between cohorts born in 1958, 1970, and 2000. However, and in contrast to the finding related to IQ, mental health of moderately and late preterm born children seems to have rather decreased in comparison to term born children across these epochs. Maternal mental health problems during pregnancy were associated with increased odds of preterm birth and being born with low birth weight. However, preterm birth and other neonatal outcomes such as being born small for gestational age appear not to have a major impact on the intergenerational transmission of social inequalities. As some of these findings are still under peer review, some of these conclusions are still preliminary – i.e. they only represent our current understanding of the data and may still be subject to change due to feedback from peers.

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