Effects of maternal intelligence, marital status, income, and home environment on cognitive development of low birthweight infants.

OBJECTIVE To examine direct and mediated effects of maternal IQ, marital status, family income, and quality of the home environment on the cognitive development of low birthweight infants. METHODS Secondary analyses on a large dataset using hierarchical regression identified factors correlated with cognitive outcomes in children at 3 years of age who were born at low birthweight. RESULTS Maternal IQ was a critical variable, because it was highly correlated with child IQ and because maternal intelligence influenced patterns of relationships among other predictor variables including marital status, income level, and home environment on child IQ. Analyses revealed that effects of these variables on child IQ interacted with maternal IQ. CONCLUSIONS Early childhood intervention programs should target those low birthweight infants most at risk for impaired cognitive development. Children at greatest risk are those living with unmarried, low IQ mothers.