Does maternal stress during labor contribute to cerebral palsy?
Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture. It often starts in early childhood and is caused by damage to the developing brain, usually before or during birth or shortly after. Common causes include infections, lack of oxygen to the brain, or bleeding in the brain. The question is whether stress felt by the mother specifically during labor plays a role in causing this condition.
Labor is the process of giving birth, which can be physically and emotionally demanding. Maternal stress means the mother’s feelings of anxiety, worry, or tension. During labor, this stress might come from pain, fear, or complications. Researchers have looked at stress during pregnancy in general, but evidence directly linking stress only during labor to cerebral palsy is limited.
Studies show that high levels of stress in mothers of children with cerebral palsy can affect the child’s behavior later on. For example, one study found that mothers of kids with cerebral palsy had higher anxiety and stress compared to mothers of healthy children. This stress was linked to the child’s emotional and behavioral issues, but it measured stress after the child was born, not during labor itself. See the full study here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1637492/full[1].
Other research explores stress in early life, like separation from the mother right after birth, which is a form of stress but not exactly labor stress. This can lead to problems with brain development, such as issues with myelin, the protective covering around nerves in the brain. In animal studies, this early stress affected thinking skills through immune cells and chemicals in the body. However, cerebral palsy involves motor problems more than just cognitive ones, and these findings do not focus on labor. Details are in this paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2412995122[2].
Pregnancy stress overall has been studied for links to brain disorders, but most look at the whole pregnancy or postpartum period, not isolated to labor. Guidelines on neurological issues in pregnancy mention outcomes for moms with conditions like multiple sclerosis, but they do not point to labor stress causing cerebral palsy in the baby. Read more here: https://www.gfmer.ch/Guidelines/Pregnancy_newborn/Neurologic_and_mental_disorders_in_pregnancy.htm[3].
Childhood stress experiences, like tough family situations, can impact emotions in preterm babies, who are at higher risk for cerebral palsy. But again, this is about after-birth stress, not during labor. The study is available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11851865/[4].
In short, while maternal stress matters for child development and can worsen outcomes in kids with cerebral palsy, no clear evidence shows it directly causes cerebral palsy during labor. The main risks for cerebral palsy are things like birth complications or prematurity, not emotional stress alone.
Sources
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1637492/full
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2412995122
https://www.gfmer.ch/Guidelines/Pregnancy_newborn/Neurologic_and_mental_disorders_in_pregnancy.htm
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11851865/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12745186/
