Peer-reviewed article
China's antenatal care promoting early childhood development: evidence from a cross‐sectional survey
Tianchen Wu, Jieqiong Niu, Xiaohan Yin, Chunxia Zhao, Xiaona Huang et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how antenatal care (ANC) services in China affect early childhood development outcomes. Researchers surveyed 1,660 mother-child pairs in two provinces and found that children whose mothers received more ANC visits had significantly lower rates of developmental delay. The protective effects worked partly through reducing maternal depression and improving nurturing care practices. The findings suggest that strengthening ANC systems could support better early childhood development across the population.
Key points
- Children whose mothers received 4+ ANC visits had 56% lower risk of overall developmental delay compared to no ANC
- Children whose mothers received 3-4 ANC visits had 40% lower risk of overall developmental delay
- Children whose mothers received 4+ ANC visits had 32% lower risk of social-emotional developmental delay
- ANC benefits for child development were partly mediated through reduced maternal depression and improved nurturing care
- 29.2% of mothers in the survey received no antenatal care
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional study, so it cannot establish causation or rule out reverse causation or confounding factors. The study only measured associations at one point in time and cannot track developmental outcomes over time.
Abstract
The Chinese government has established a three-tier maternal care system covering the entire country and providing integrated antenatal care (ANC) for pregnancies. This study aimed to analyze the direct and indirect effects of ANC services on early childhood development. A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted for mothers' ANC visits and assessments of early childhood development in Shanxi and Guizhou provinces, China. A total of 1660 mother-child dyads were included in current analyses: 29.2% of mothers did not receive any ANC (ANC1), 23.3% of mothers received ANC three or fewer times (ANC2), and 47.5% of mothers received ANC four or more times (ANC3). Children whose mothers received ANC services had a significantly lower risk of overall developmental delay (OR = 0.60, 95% CI: 0.44-0.81 for ANC2; and OR = 0.44, 95% CI: 0.34-0.59 for ANC3) and social-emotional developmental delay (OR = 0.68, 95% CI: 0.49-0.94 for ANC3). Furthermore, a significant pathway relationship mediated by maternal depression and nurturing care was found between ANC and developmental delay. This study showed ANC services significantly reduced the risk of developmental delay in offspring. We also suggest that a nationwide ANC system can be a good delivery platform for scaled-up early childhood development interventions.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Antenatal care services through China's three-tier maternal care system
- Population
- Mother-child dyads in Shanxi and Guizhou provinces, China (n=1,660)
Key finding
ANC 4+ visits: OR=0.44 (95% CI: 0.34-0.59) for overall developmental delay