We all know that there are serious health effects on preterm born babies but we don’t talk enough about the consequences on personality.
Indeed, babies born before 37 weeks tend to be shy and withdrawn.
Dr Marina Mendonça from the University of Warwick studied how their early birth can influence their romantic lives.
Mendonça reports that the shorter the child’s gestation is, the greater the effects in their adult life.
and that the ones born more than 3 weeks early are 28% less likely to be involved in a romantic relationship and 22% less likely to have children on their own.
She also states that parents and educators should be aware that preterm babies tend to be shy and that they should help them during childhood and adolescence to overcome their shyness in order to push them to make friends, that will lead to find romantic partners, to have sexual relationships and thus, become parents.
Dr Marin Mendonça also warns on the difficulty of that task as teenagers born early are less risk-taking and “fun seeker” and that parents are in general in favor of the lack of rebellion.
But not encouraging them in that way could lead to greater damage in their adult life.