The study, by researchers at the University of Notre Dame Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute, appears in the journal Child Development. 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. 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. [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. 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. 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. 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. 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. "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.
– 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.)