Paternal interests are theoretically served by maximizing fetal growth, and maternal interests by managing investment in current and future offspring, but whether paternal and maternal influences act on different components of overall size is unknown.
In the special case of interactions among full sisters (Table 2, column 1), it is the patrigenes that actually match the maternal interests because the patrigenes are equally related to all sisters (including self), as is the mother.
The parental conflict hypothesis postulates that genomic imprinting in mammals evolved because of conflicting maternal and paternal interests in the allocation of maternal resources to the offspring with paternally epressed genes enhancing and maternally epressed genes limiting feto-placental growth.
While fathers lose potential reproductive success if the offspring and mother die through obstructed labor, the penalty in lifetime reproductive success is much greater for the mother if she dies in childbirth, creating further tension between maternal and paternal interests in fetal growth.
Since 'near-miss' is somewhat more frequent than maternal deaths, interest has grown in using it as an indicator of the quality of obstetric care [ 5].
This theme was built on four categories that describe different aspects of the challenges obstetricians faced in management of complicated pregnancies, including the balancing of maternal health interests and fetal health interests, as is inevitably required in obstetric practice.
The maternal-fetal interests model does not offer adequate guidance for such structurally determined choices surrounding pregnancy and warrants further discussion and research.
Of the four trial outcomes of interest, maternal smoking during pregnancy and the effects this has on children's health and general development yielded the most results.
We developed three separate logistic regression models, for the three outcomes of interest (maternal high-risk situations, caesarean delivery and adverse neonatal outcomes).
