Читать книгу Infants and Children in Context - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 158

1 In your view, is substance use during pregnancy a form of abuse? Why or why not?

2 What do you think could be done to reduce the prevalence of substance use by pregnant women?

Maternal alcohol and substance use harms prenatal development. Is it abuse?

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At the same time, quality care can lessen the long-term impact of prenatal exposure to substances (Calhoun, Conner, Miller, & Messina, 2015). Some evidence suggests, for example, that developmental differences in exposed infants are reduced and often disappear when medical and environmental factors are considered (Behnke & Smith, 2013). Disentangling the long-term effects of prenatal exposure to substances, subsequent parenting, and contextual factors is challenging. Researchers and health care providers who construct interventions must address the contextual and parenting-related risk factors to improve the developmental outlook for children exposed to drugs prenatally. The accompanying Applying Developmental Science feature examines the difficulties of addressing maternal drug use in the legal system.