7 Declarations About 'Crack Babies' That Were Flat-Out Wrong

They Had Small Heads, Bad Muscle Tone, Tremors After studies such as one in Philadelphia in 1989 found that nearly one in six newborns at city hospitals had mothers who tested positive for cocaine, the stories began to explode in the media about the so-called “crack babies.” They had small heads and were easily agitated and prone to tremors and bad muscle tone, according to reports, many of which were anecdotal. Deborah A. Frank, a pediatrics professor at Boston University who has tracked a group of children who were exposed in the womb, said the "crack baby" label led to erroneous stereotyping. "You can't walk into a classroom and tell this kid was exposed and this kid was not," Frank said. They Would Not Be Able to Form Meaningful Relationships Health workers claimed the babies seemed aloof and avoided eye contact. Some social workers predicted a lost generation — kids with a host of learning and emotional deficits who would overwhelm school systems and not be able to hold a job or form meaningful relationships. The "crack baby" image became symbolic of bad mothering, and some cocaine-using mothers had their babies taken from them or, in a few cases, were arrested. But Dr. Hallam Hurt’s study at Albert Einstein Medical Center found no significant differences between the cocaine-exposed children and the controls who hadn’t been exposed. They Would Grow Up to Be Criminals Frank, who has tracked a group of children, said that cocaine — along with other illicit drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes — "isn't good for babies," but the belief that they would "grow up to be addicts and criminals is not true. Some kids have stunned us with how well they've done." Karen, left, and Jaimee Drakewood They Would Be Born 'Slow' or 'Mentally Retarded' Karen Drakewood, 51, who signed up for Dr. Hurt’s study at Einstein when she was pregnant with her daughter Jaimee 25 years ago, was afraid Jaimee would be born “slow” or “mentally retarded” because of the drugs. When Jaimee was born, as Hurt explained, a social worker on TV predicted that a crack baby would grow up to "have an IQ of perhaps 50." A print article quoted a psychologist as saying "crack was interfering with the central core of what it is to be human," and yet another article predicted that crack babies were "doomed to a life of uncertain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority." But Jaimee Drakewood, who is about to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee University, has shown none of that. Neither have the other subjects in Hurt’s study that followed more than 200 children. Babies Doomed for Life Claire Coles, a psychiatry professor at Emory University who has been tracking a group of low-income Atlanta children, said her research found nothing to back up predictions that cocaine-exposed babies were doomed for life. But she said the myth of the crack babies still lingers. She said cocaine exposure does not seem to affect children's overall cognition and school performance — although some evidence suggests that these children are less able to regulate their reactions to stressful stimuli, which could affect learning and emotional health. They Would Be a Burden to School Systems Dr. Hurt’s team of researchers found just a slight difference between the cocaine-exposed children and the controls who hadn’t been exposed: At age 4, the average IQ of the cocaine-exposed children was 79.0 and the average IQ for the non-exposed children was 81.9. Both numbers are well below the average of 90 to 109 for U.S. children in the same age group. When it came to school readiness at age 6, about 25 percent of children in each group scored in the abnormal range on tests for math and letter and word recognition. But poverty was the main reason for any difference, Hurt concluded. They Were Already Addicted to Drugs Drug use did not differ between the exposed and non-exposed participants as young adults, according to Hurt’s research. About 42 percent used marijuana and three tested positive for cocaine one time each. Hurt’s team has kept tabs on 110 of the 224 children originally in the study. Of the 110, two are dead — one shot in a bar and another in a drive-by shooting -- three are in prison, six graduated from college, and six more are on track to graduate. There have been 60 children born to the 110 participants. Hurt said, "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine."

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