BEHAVIOR OF SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN FROM DRUG-USING FAMILIES

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Drug addiction is a growing problem among American women, particularly women of childbearing age. It is widely assumed that children born to drug-addicted mothers are at high risk for a variety of problems during childhood and for later drug abuse, but little is known about behavioral characteristics of these children or the types of family environments in which they live. The proposed research will provide a broad range of measures on a sample of approximately 40 low-income black 9-year-old children who were exposed prenatally to methadone and who continue to live in families with their biological mothers. They will be contrasted with a group of children whose mothers never used opioid drugs. Both groups of children were recruited during their mothers' pregnancies. Children will be assessed on a variety of instruments designed to measure general psychiatric and intellectual functioning as well as problems in attention, motor coordination, and conduct disorders. Instruments will include a combination of clinical interviews, questionnaires to parents and teachers, and direct tests of children. Another set of instruments will assess strengths and weaknesses of family environment that might affect child development, including maternal adaptive functioning, drug use, childbearing attitudes, affective style, involvement with child, and control of child; family structures, stresses and supports; and sibling behavior. Because the proposed sample was studied extensively during the children's first two years of life, data can be analyzed to look at patterns of early child behavior, early mother behavior, and early child medical conditions that predict school-age outcome. Such information on child and family development over time will be useful in planning preventive intervention programs for offspring of drug-addicted women that begin during infancy and toddlerhood.