Peer-reviewed article

Associations Between Teenage Motherhood, Perinatal Cortical Maturation, and Risk of Psychopathology in Children: The Mediating Role of Pregnancy Complications.

Andréa Paysserand, Raoul Belzeaux, Guillaume Auzias, Antoine Lefrere, Arnaud Cachia et al. · 10 Jul 2026

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Children born to teenage mothers (<20 years) are at increased risk for psychopathology, partially due to atypical brain development. We explored whether this risk is mediated by perinatal complications more frequent in teenage pregnancies and by their impact on perinatal brain maturation as indexed by sulcal morphometry. METHODS: Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 5291 singletons, ages 9-11 years), we investigated the associations between maternal age, child psychopathology risks (Child Behavior Checklist [CBCL]), sulcal morphometry (sulcal surface, width, length, and mean depth), and perinatal complications through mixed modeling, mediation analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM). RESULTS: Maternal age was negatively associated with CBCL scores, indicating higher risks of psychopathology in children born to teenage mothers. Severe anemia, nausea, unplanned pregnancy, tobacco/marijuana use, and urinary tract infection partially mediated this association. Consistently, SEM showed that the association between maternal age and offspring psychopathology risk was mediated by perinatal adversities that were more prevalent in teenage pregnancies. Maternal age was associated with sulcal morphometry, consistent with variations in perinatal brain maturation. In boys, perinatal adversity linked to teenage pregnancies was associated with wider frontal and subparietal sulci, which mediated higher CBCL scores in boys born to a teenage mother. In girls, maternal age was positively associated with occipitotemporal sulcus length; however, sulcal morphometry was not associated with perinatal adversity in teenage pregnancies and did not mediate psychopathology risks. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, this study suggests that teenage motherhood is linked to early brain development and psychopathology risks in offspring partially through the perinatal adversities that are more commonly associated with it.