Background: Lip and palate clefts are the most common birth defects that cause many medical, psychological, social and financial problems for person and his or her family. Since many factors are involved in causing these defects, this study aimed is review the effective factors causing cleft lip and palate.                                                                                              
Methods: The present study was conducted using a narrative review. For this purpose, the following keywords were searched in the PubMed, SID, Science Direct, Google Scholar, WHO, databases: Cleft Lip, Cleft Palate, neonates, Risk Factor, Effect Factors from 1990 until 2019.
Results: This study showed valuable results regarding the risk factors for neonatal cleft lip and palate, that including family and genetic history of cleft lip and palate, family marriage, using drug and antibiotics in the first 3 months of pregnancy, Maternal stressors especially in the first 3 months of pregnancy, high BMI before maternal pregnancy, maternal age over 35, maternal smoking during pregnancy, folic acid deficiency and environmental factors.
Conclusions: Lip and clefts palate can be associated with many complications such as speech and hearing problems, breast feeding problems, ear infections and psychosocial problems for the newborn. Therefore, identifying the factors that contribute to their creation can help to have healthy people in the community and prevent economic and social damage.