A 30-year follow-up of 1,758 inner-city children and their mothers in the Pathways to Adulthood Study revealed significant associations in transgenerational timing of age at 1st birth between mothers and their daughters and sons. Intergenerational age patterns were associated with the children's family and personal characteristics during childhood and adolescence and self-sufficiency at age 27-33. Continuity in teenage parenthood was associated with family and personal characteristics unfavorable for optimal child development and successful adult outcomes. Delay in 1st parenthood to age 25 or older was associated with significantly greater odds of more favorable environmental and developmental characteristics and greater adult self-sufficiency. The authors concluded that age at 1st birth of both mothers and children contributes, but in subtly different ways for daughters and sons, to the children's development and adult self-sufficiency.

To use neonatal and placental anthropometry as proxy measures of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and to relate these to blood pressure later in childhood. Study design A post hoc analysis of full-term white and black children from the Collaborative Perinatal Project, followed from birth until age 7 years (n 5 29 710). Blood pressure above the 90th percentile by gender and race was considered high blood pressure. Anthropometric measures at birth included birth weight, ponderal index (PI, birth weight/birth length 3), head to chest circumference (HCC) ratio, and placental ratio percentage (PRP, placental weight*100/birth weight). Results Among anthropometric measures, PI, HCC, and birth weight were not associated with high systolic blood pressure at age 7 years, but PRP was. In multiple logistic regression, high systolic blood pressure and widened pulse pressure were both predicted by increased PRP [odds ratio (OR) 1.03 and 1.04, P , 0.001] but not by birth weight, when adjusted for gender, race, and maternal education. High diastolic blood pressure was weakly predicted by birth weight (OR 1.10, P 5 0.05) but not by PRP. Conclusions PRP is associated with an increased risk for high systolic blood pressure and pulse pressure later in childhood, whereas birth weight, PI, and HCC are not. The proportion of placental weight to birth weight is a useful marker of IUGR for studying the developmental origins of adult disease hypothesis.

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