Crack baby

A crack baby is a child born to a mother who uses cocaine.

Some people during the 1980s believed that a mother's use of cocaine during pregnancy could affect the fetus by allowing the drug to cross the placenta and affect the fetus' brain, or by causing blood vessels to constrict, which would hinder the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the fetus.

"It's sort of hard to believe that something as powerful as [cocaine] doesn't have a profound effect on the fetus," said Keith Scott, a researcher at the University of Miami's Linda Ray Intervention Center. [1]

Others downplayed or dismissed the medical risk, citing long-term developmental studies.

"Their cognitive development is normal when you control for environmental and other factors," said Ira Chasnoff, MD, a University of Illinois School of Medicine researcher. Chasnoff has been studying children with prenatal cocaine exposure since the early 1980s. [1]

The term crack babies enjoyed a brief heyday when commentators, especially conservatives, sought to highlight links between drug abuse, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and so on as maintaining a "permanent underclass."