fant death syndrome may be prevalent but this has not been confirmed. Maternal and fetal direct effects include the possibility of intracerebral bleeding due to rupture of a preexisting aneurysm or arterioenous malformation; hypertension, seizures, and intracerebral hemorrhage has been found. Fetal intracerebral bleeding has also been shown and perinatal cerebral infarctions have been reported in newborns (Sullivan, 1990).
Children effected by prenatal drug abuse show damage at birth. Cocaine is associated with irritability, tremulousness, seizures, jitteriness, abnormal respiratory rates, tachycardia, abnormal sleep and feeding, diarrhea, and risk of cerebral infarction and sudden death syndrome in the infant. Beyond these problems the mother is unable to console the infant. In a study describing these affected children, 20 children and their caregivers from 15 families were observed. Findings showed that these children were smaller and showed a 35% developmental delay with lags in language and other cognitive skills (Free, Russell, Mills, & Hathaway, 1990).
Behaviors of Cocaine-abusing Mothers
The cocaine abusing mother is frequently unable to attend to their child. Ball, Mayes, DeTeso, and Schottenfeld (1997) studied cocaine-abusing mothers (n = 94) with videotaped ratings of attentiveness to their children and compared finings to non-cocaine-using mothers (n = 70). The mothers were observed when the child was three, twelve, and 18 months of age. Raters of attentiveness differentiated between attentive, episodic brief distraction, prolonged distraction, and detachment. A random sample of 30 sessions was re-coded by a separate rater to ensure reliability. Findings showed that at three months the cocaine-abusing women spent less time being attentive and shifted their attentiveness more than control mothers. The later assessments did not show these differences. It was concluded that the attentiveness was more rel...