The cognitive skills of children born to teen mothers do not lag behind those of children born to mothers in their 20s and 30s, a new study indicates.

According to UK and Canadian researchers, there is a widespread belief that the intellectual development of children born to teenage mothers is less than that of children born to older mothers. They decided to look into this further.

They analysed data from a long-term study involving almost 19,000 children who were born in the UK in 2000 and 2001.

The verbal, non-verbal and spatial skills of 12,000 of these children were assessed when they were five years of age.

Around 5% of the children's mothers were aged 18 or under, while 20% of the mothers were aged between 19 and 24. The remaining mothers were 25 or older.

The researchers said that when the gestational age (the point in pregnancy when the child was born), the child's birthweight and their gender were taken into account, the children of teenage mothers did score lower in all of the skill tests.

However, when perinatal and social factors were taken into account, the differences between the results of the non-verbal and spatial skills tests disappeared almost completely.

Perinatal factors included smoking during pregnancy, poor antenatal care and the absence of breastfeeding. Social factors included household income, mother's education, mental health and the absence of the father in the home.

The researchers noted that teen mothers were more likely to have their pregnancy confirmed later and to receive no antenatal care compared to older mothers.

Furthermore, just 7% of them breastfed their babies for at least four months, compared to 41% of mothers in their early 30s.

"Being a teenage mother significantly limits one's ability to gain further education and higher level employment, which may in turn affect child development," the researchers suggested.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Archives of Disease in Childhood.