Background This study examined transactional associations among maternal depression, maternal sensitivity, and child engagement in the context of a low‐income, diverse sample with maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy (MSDP) as a moderator of these transactions. Methods A random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel model was used to investigate within‐ and between‐family variability from infancy to toddlerhood. The sample included 247 mother–child dyads (47% girls; 51% African‐American; 178 MSDP, 69 non‐MSDP). Assessments were conducted once during each trimester of pregnancy and at 2, 9, 16, and 24 months of child ages. Results Between‐family associations revealed that children exposed to higher levels of sensitive parenting across time had higher behavioral engagement from infancy to toddlerhood. At the within‐family level, increased sensitive parenting at 9 months was predictive of increased child engagement at 16 months which in turn predicted increases in sensitive parenting at 24 months. Increased maternal depression was concurrently associated with lower maternal sensitivity at 2 months and lower child engagement at 16 months. Contrary to hypotheses, changes in maternal depression were not associated to changes in parenting or child engagement. These associations did not vary between prenatally smoking and nonsmoking mothers. However, there was significantly higher stability in maternal depression across time among nonsmoking mothers compared to those in the MSDP group. Additionally, increased maternal depression was related to lower‐than‐expected child engagement at 9 months only for the nonsmoking group. Conclusions Results highlight transactional processes at the within‐family level and the importance of timing for parent and child effects on transactional processes.
Decreased consumption of nicotine and other drugs during pregnancy appears to be a cross‐species phenomenon from which mechanism(s) capable of interrupting addictive processes could be elucidated. Whether pregnancy influences smoking behaviour independent of women's knowledge of the pregnancy, however, has not been considered. Using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we estimated within‐person change in mean cigarettes/day smoked across the estimated date of conception but prior to individually reported dates of pregnancy recognition using longitudinal smoking data from two independent observational cohorts, the Growing Up Healthy (GUH, n = 271) and Midwest Infant Development Studies (MIDS, n = 145). Participants smoked an average of half a pack/day in the month immediately before conception (M (SD) = 12(8.1) and 9.5(6.7) cigarettes/day in GUH and MIDS, respectively). We observed within‐person declines in smoking after conception, both before (MGUH = −0.9; 95% CI −1.6, −0.2; p = 0.01; MMIDS = −1.1; 95% CI ‐1.9, −0.3; p = 0.01) and after (MGUH = ‐4.8; 95% CI ‐5.5, −4.1; p < 0.001; MMIDS = −3.3; 95% CI −4.4, −2.5; p < 0.001) women were aware of having conceived, even when women who had quit and women who were planning to conceive were excluded from analyses. Pregnancy may interrupt smoking‐related processes via mechanisms not previously considered. Plausible candidates and directions for future research are discussed.
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