A glass of wine a day will not harm your baby and may actually be good for a child’s development, researchers have found.
Moderate drinking of between three and seven glasses of alcohol a week does not harm a child’s foetal neurodevelopment, it is said.
In tests on balance, a marker of development, children whose parents’ drank more actually performed better.
However, social advantage may have had an influence as more affluent, better educated older women tend to consume more alcohol during pregnancy, the team from Bristol University said.
The findings are likely to add to the confusion surrounding alcohol and pregnancy, and directly contradict the advice of the Department of Health, who warn pregnant women to abstain altogether or to limit consumption to a glass of wine a week.
Almost 7,000 ten-year-olds underwent a 20 minute assessment which tested dynamic balance, by walking on a beam, and static balance, including standing on one leg with their eyes closed. 70 per cent of the mothers, whose drinking had been monitored at 18 weeks and again after birth at 47 months, had drunk no alcohol while pregnant.
One in four mothers-to-be were either low consumers of alcohol, drinking around a glass a week, or moderate consumers, drinking between three and seven glasses.
Nearly one in 20 drank more, and around one in seven of these women binge drank four or more glasses at any one time.
Four years after the pregnancy, more than 28 per cent of the women were not drinking any alcohol, and over half were drinking the moderate amount.
In general, the mothers who drank more, but who were not binge drinkers, were better off and older; the mothers who binge drank were less affluent and younger.
More than half of the fathers’ said they drank one or more glasses a week during the pregnancy, and one in five said they drank one or more glasses a day.
Higher total alcohol consumption before and after pregnancy, as well as higher consumption by the father during the first three months of pregnancy, were associated with better performance by the children, particularly in static balance.
There was no link found between genetic predisposition to low levels of alcohol consumption and the ability to balance.
Professor John Macleod, of the School of Social and Community Medicine at Bristol University, said: "Low to moderate alcohol consumption did not seem to interfere with a child's ability to balance for any of the three components assessed.”
But he added that in the women “moderate alcohol intake was a marker for social advantage, which may itself be the key factor in better balance, possibly overriding subtle harmful effects of moderate alcohol use".
Drinking during pregnancy can causes foetal alcohol syndrome, which can leave children with impaired IQ and low birth weight, leading to severe learning difficulties and addiction problems in adulthood, previous studies have shown.
Higher than average intake has also been linked to sleep disorders, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder and poorer co-ordination and balance in long term studies.
Whilst the side effects are more common with heavier drinkers, the Government advises women to abstain on the grounds that not enough is known about the effects moderate consumption.
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