You may have heard before that what you eat and how you manage your health during pregnancy will affect your baby’s health.
But what if it actually has something to do with children’s motor skills as well?
A study published in January 2025 by a research team at the University of Turku in Finland found that a mother’s diet, body shape, and even her emotional state during pregnancy affect her child’s athletic ability.
In particular, it seems that eating a healthy diet leads to improved physical abilities in children, while having a lot of body fat can lead to delayed physical development.
Even more interesting, feeling depressed during pregnancy may actually help improve your baby’s motor skills.
Will your lifestyle during pregnancy change your child’s future?
A research team from the University of Turku used data from a clinical trial conducted between 2013 and 2017 in southwestern Finland to explore the question: ” How is motor development affected in children born to overweight or obese women ?”
The study involved 439 women who were less than 18 weeks pregnant and had a BMI of 25 or more, and recorded their dietary habits, body fat percentage, whether or not they had gestational diabetes (GDM), and symptoms of depression and anxiety during early and late pregnancy.
The children were then followed up when they reached the age of 5 to 6 years old, and their physical abilities were measured using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children – Second Edition (Movement ABC-2), an international physical ability assessment tool.
Although it is a rather long name, “Movement ABC-2” means something like “Children’s Movement Assessment Battery, 2nd Edition” in Japanese.
This test was developed to provide a comprehensive assessment of a child’s motor skills and evaluates three key skills: manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination and balance.
By the way, the first edition was published in 1992, revised in 2007, and the current second edition is widely used.
Based on this data, we conducted a statistical analysis to determine how a mother’s lifestyle during pregnancy affects her child’s motor development.
The study revealed that a mother’s lifestyle has a significant impact on her child’s physical ability.
First, children whose mothers had healthy eating habits tended to score higher on physical ability tests.
In particular, babies whose mothers ate more vegetables, fruits, fish, and whole grains during early pregnancy had better manual dexterity and eye-hand coordination.
The higher the fish intake, the more pronounced this tendency became.
On the other hand, it has also been revealed that a mother’s high body fat percentage may delay her child’s motor development.
In particular, high body fat percentage in the later stages of pregnancy tended to increase the risk of the child having Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), with every 1% increase in body fat percentage in the later stages increasing the risk of movement disorders by 1.12 times.
Additionally, gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) was found to have no statistically significant effect on children’s physical abilities.
This may be more to do with the associated effects of diet and weight management than with GDM itself .
However, what was surprising in this study was that maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy were associated with improved motor skills in their children .
Does a pregnant mother’s mental health affect her child’s athletic ability?
One unexpected finding in this study was that children of mothers with severe depressive symptoms tended to have better hand-eye coordination skills .
At first glance, the relationship between a mother’s mental state during pregnancy and her child’s physical ability five years after birth seems unclear.
The research team has several hypotheses about this unexpected result.
One possibility is that stress during pregnancy may lead to “faster developmental strategies” in the child.
The hypothesis is that maternal stress induces changes in fetal development that prepare the fetus for environmental challenges, and that improved motor skills may be part of this adaptive mechanism.
It is also known that increased stress and depression increase levels of hormones called glucocorticoids (especially cortisol) in the body.
Cortisol plays an important role in fetal brain development, and increased levels, especially during the third trimester, may accelerate the development of cognitive and motor skills.
Depression refers to a sustained state of low mood and reduced motivation , but it would be premature to ask whether being depressed during pregnancy is better for the baby’s future.
In this study, most of the pregnant women who participated had relatively low depression scores, and it is currently unknown whether similar results would be obtained if they had severe depressive symptoms.
The researchers noted that “the clinical implications of these findings are unclear and further research is needed.”
Choices made during pregnancy shape the future of your children
It seems that a mother’s lifestyle during pregnancy has a greater impact on her child’s future than you might imagine.
Improving diet may improve children’s athletic ability, and avoiding the accumulation of excess body fat may prevent delays in motor development.
In addition, the relationship between mental health during pregnancy and child development is a topic that should be explored in more depth in the future.
In current obstetric care, dietary advice during pregnancy focuses primarily on nutrition.
However, given the results of this study, it is possible that “dietary advice to promote motor development” may be incorporated into future studies.
Knowing that a mother’s choices shape her child’s future may help her make better choices.