Family Growth and its Effect on the Relationship Between Obstetric Factors and Child Functioning

Abstract

We know that women from different socio-economic groups also differ in their family building behaviour—in their age at first pregnancy and in the size and spacing of their families. We also know that each combination of social class, age and parity carries with it a characteristic pattern of obstetric risk. A further set of hypotheses relates obstetric risk to the intellectual functioning of the children. I propose to examine here some of the social processes underlying these sets of relationships and to show how some supposedly biological phenomena may be interpreted sociologically.