Children born to women who experienced stressful events during pregnancy may be less coordinated in their body movements as teenagers, according to a new study. 
 
 The new findings suggest that "programs aimed at detecting and reducing maternal stress during pregnancy" may improve the long-term outlook for these children, study author Beth Hands, professor of human movement at the University of Notre Dame Australia, said in a statement. 
 
 In the study, doctors asked 2,900 women in Australia twice during their pregnancies — at 18 weeks and 34 weeks — whether they had experienced stressful events while they were pregnant. Examples of stressful events included financial problems, the death of a family member or friend, or a separation or divorce. [7 Ways Pregnant Women Affect Babies] 
 
 The researchers then examined the subjects' children, looking at overall coordination and ability to control body movements at three time points — when they were 10, 14 and 17 years old. For example, the researchers tested the kids' grip strength, how far they could jump, and how well they could stand on one foot or turn a nut onto a bolt. 
 
 The researchers found that the children born to mothers who experienced three or more stressful events during pregnancy scored lower on the tests at all three time points than the children of mothers who experienced fewer than three stressful events. 
 
 Moreover, stressful events that occurred in later pregnancy seemed to have a greater effect on the children's coordination than those that occurred earlier, the researchers said. This may be because later pregnancy coincides with the development of a brain region called the cerebellar cortex, which is involved in controlling movement, the researchers said. 
 
 However, it is not clear whether or how the results of the tests conducted in the study may translate into real-life impacts for the participants, said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York in New Hyde Park, New York. 
 
 For example, the motor skills the researchers tested, such as the ability to stand on one foot, "may not necessarily matter much in life," Adesman told Live Science. 
 
 Instead, it would be more interesting to learn whether stress was linked with coordination problems such as buttoning buttons or riding a bicycle, Adesman said. 
 
 "Those might be more real-world examples of motor deficits that affect people on a daily basis," he said. 
 
 The new study was published today (Oct. 14) in the journal Child Development. 
 
 Follow Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on Twitter. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. ||||| Stress experienced by mothers during pregnancy is related to their children's behavior, as well as mental and cognitive outcomes in middle childhood and into adolescence, but few studies have looked at the relationship between maternal pregnancy stress and children's motor development. Now a new longitudinal study has found that mothers who experienced more stressful events during their pregnancies had children who scored lower on a test of movement competence. 
 
 The study, by researchers at the University of Notre Dame Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute, appears in the journal Child Development. 
 
 To test the relationship between maternal stress and children's motor development, researchers followed 2,900 primarily Caucasian Australian mothers. When the women were 18 weeks pregnant, they were asked to complete a questionnaire about stressful events during their pregnancies. These events included financial hardship, losing a close relative or friend, separation or divorce, marital problems, problems with the pregnancy, losing a job, and moving residences. The moms completed the same questionnaire when they were 34 weeks pregnant. 
 
 When the children born of those pregnancies were 10, 14, and 17 years old, they were assessed on their overall motor development and coordination using a 10-item movement test. The test measured children's hand strength as well as their ability to touch a finger to one's nose and then back to the index finger, distance jump, walk along a line heel to toe, and stand on one foot. The test also measured their ability to move small beads from one box to another, thread beads onto a rod, tap a finger over 10 seconds, turn a nut onto a bolt, and slide a rod along a bar as slowly as possible. Children were grouped according to those born to mothers who experienced no stress during pregnancy, those born to moms who experienced fewer than three stressful events during their pregnancies, and those born to moms who experienced three or more stressful events during pregnancy. 
 
 The study found that children born to mothers who experienced more stressful events during pregnancy scored lower on motor development across all three survey years (ages 10, 14, and 17). This may suggest an accumulative effect of stress on the developing fetal motor system. The greatest differences in motor development outcomes were between individuals whose mothers experienced no stress and those who experienced high stress (i.e., more than three stressful events). Stressful events experienced in later pregnancy had more influence on children's motor development scores than those experienced earlier. According to the researchers, this may be related to the development of the cerebellar cortex, a part of the brain that develops later in pregnancy and that controls many motor outcomes. 
 
 Low motor development is defined by how children score on the test used in this study, with children who fall below a certain cutoff point having different manifestations of low motor development that involve poor fine motor skills or poor gross motor skills or both. Low motor development has been linked to poorer short- and long-term mental and physical health outcomes, so it is important to assess the early risk factors to provide early intervention and support. Children with low motor competence can have difficulty in everyday life with fine and gross motor tasks such as writing, throwing, and running. However, with intervention and support, this can be improved in a number of cases. 
 
 "Given our findings on the importance of mothers' emotional and mental health on a wide range of developmental and health outcomes, programs aimed at detecting and reducing maternal stress during pregnancy may alert parents and health professionals to potential difficulties and improve the long-term outcomes for these children," notes Beth Hands, professor of human movement at the University of Notre Dame Australia, who coauthored the study. 
 
 Adds Tegan Grace, a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Notre Dame Australia, another coauthor of the study: "Screening for postnatal depression occurs in most antenatal clinics in Australia. This cost-effective model could be used to screen for maternal stress throughout pregnancy as part of regular clinic visits." Pregnant women who are under stress could be counseled about cost-effective stress-reduction techniques such as gentle exercise, she suggests. 
 
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 The study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia; the University of Western Australia (UWA); the Telethon Kids Institute; Edith Cowan University; Raine Medical Research Foundation; UWA Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences; Women's and Infant's Research Foundation, and Curtin University. 
 
 Summarized from Child Development, The Impact of Maternal Gestational Stress on Motor Development in Late Childhood and Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study by Grace, T, Bulsara, M (University of Notre Dame Australia), Robinson, M (The Telethon Kids Institute), and Hands, B (University of Notre Dame Australia). Copyright 2015 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved.
– Are you a klutz? A new study out of Australia suggests an unexpected reason why. It found that stressful events in the latter stage of a woman's pregnancy may increase the risk of movement and coordination deficits later in the child's life. Reporting this week in the journal Child Development, researchers at the University of Notre Dame Australia say they followed 2,900 Australian mothers, testing them at 18 and 34 weeks pregnant to document stressful events during pregnancy such as divorce, death in the family, a move, or pregnancy issues. Fast-forward a decade: When these women's children were 10, 14, and 17 years old, the offspring had their motor development and general coordination—things like hand strength, walking heel-toe, and standing on one foot—tested. The more stressful events a mother experienced (particularly those who went through three or more such events), especially later in pregnancy, the worse the children performed at every age tested. But the head of the developmental and behavioral pediatrics department at a New York hospital tells Live Science that it's hard to read too much into the findings. The skills tested for "may not necessarily matter much in life," he says, as compared to, say, testing for whether the kids could button a shirt. "Those might be more real-world examples of motor deficits that affect people on a daily basis." Either way, study co-author Beth Hands says in a press release that the results suggest programs that help reduce maternal stress in pregnancy could improve outcomes for these children. (Maternal stress in pregnancy leaves its trace in children's DNA.)