A recent study that has been completed in the UK has shown that mothers who work when they are eight months pregnant are doing as much harm to their babies as if they were smoking at the same stage of pregnancy.
The researcher has come out of the University of Essex and it is shown that babies born from mothers who worked during the eighth or ninth month of pregnancy, are half a pound lighter than the babies of mothers who stopped work before this final stage of the pregnancy.
The research also highlighted that the risks were so great that they were actually equivalent to the risks of smoking while you are pregnant. It is well known that mothers who smoke during pregnancy stunt the growth of their baby and so they are going to be born lighter. This study has shown that the risks are just the same for mothers who work late in the pregnancy.
It was also shown the jobs which are more physically demanding tend to do more harm to the baby then other types of work which do not involve physical exercise. This means that the work tends to affect the uneducated population, more than it does the educated.
This research has been based on three individual studies, one of which was conducted in the United States, and the other two being conducted in the UK. The research looked at over 1200 children between the years 1991 and 2005. Furthermore a great deal of information was gathered from other sources in order to verify the results.
The study has been authored by Professor Marco Francesconi and he has stated, “The government need to consider how they are going to incentivise employers to give maternity leave that is more flexible. It is important that women have time off before their babies are born, as well as after.”
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