Overweight mums not linked to children's intellectual and behaviour problems

Previous studies have shown that women who are overweight before becoming pregnant are more likely to have children with behavioural and learning problems. However, a new study by researchers at the University of Bristol suggests that there is not a direct link between mothers being too fat and their children being badly behaved or doing poorly at school. The researchers studied 7,500 British and Dutch children. The British children were born between 1991 and 1992 and the Dutch children were born between 2002 and 2006. Overall there was no connection between the mothers' pre-pregnancy weights and their children's performance on tests of language and other skills. Children born to overweight women did do less well on language tests but once the fact that fatter mothers tended to be less well-educated and have lower incomes was taken into account the link disappeared.