A team of researchers led by the University of Oxford analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study of 12,000 children born in the UK between 2000 and 2002. They found that the majority of children born to unplanned pregnancies had a more limited vocabulary and poorer non-verbal and spatial abilities at three and five- years-old.
On average children were four to five months behind planned children in terms of their language abilities.
In contrast, children born through assisted reproduction techniques (for example through IVF or hormone treatment) were three to four months ahead with their vocabulary.
However, these differences disappeared when a child’s socio-economic circumstances were taken into account.
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