Developmental inflection point for the effect of maternal childhood adversity on children’s mental health from childhood to adolescence: Time-varying effect of gender differences

Abstract

Childhood adversities have a well-established dose–response relationship with later mental health. However, less attention has been given to intergenerational influences. Further, it is unknown how intergenerational influences intersect with children’s developmental stages and gender. The current study examined whether a developmental inflection point exists when the intergenerational influences of childhood adversities gain salience and explored differences by children’s gender. Data were from the Young Women and Child Development Study (n = 361). Time-varying effect models (TVEMs) and moderation TVEMs by child’s gender were evaluated. Our findings reveal that ages 5–8, the period of transition into primary schools, may represent a developmental inflection point when the intergenerational influences of maternal childhood adversity start emerging substantially. The results from gender interaction TVEMs reveal that maternal childhood adversity was a statistically significant predictor of internalizing problems until age 11, regardless of child’s gender, and remained statistically significant for girls’ internalizing problems until age 16.7. For externalizing problems, maternal childhood adversity was a statistically significant predictor until age 13, regardless of gender.

Maternal childhood adversity and adolescent marijuana use at age 17 years: The role of parental mental health and parenting behaviors

“…The data were from the Young Women and Child Development Study (YCDS), a longitudinal panel study involving a community sample of pregnant and parenting adolescent mothers (Oxford et al, 2010). Mother–child dyads were followed for 17 years ( N = 240); sample retention rates were consistently high across study years, averaging 94.6% (Lee et al, 2022). The sample was racially diverse (48.8% White, 27.1% African American, and 24.1% mixed or other racial groups).…”

“…Further, there remain continued disparities by race and ethnicity with Hispanic, Native American, and non‐Hispanic Black teens more than two times more likely to give birth as a teen than their non‐Hispanic White counterparts (Martin et al, 2021). Children born to teen mothers are often at increased risk for behavioral health problems (Huang et al, 2014; Lee et al, 2020), including substance use (Cederbaum et al, 2020), and compromised development (Lee et al, 2020). Previous studies suggest that being born to a teen mother increases the risk of marijuana use (De Genna et al, 2015) and marijuana abuse or dependence (McGrath et al, 2014).…”

“…Examining the intergenerational impact of childhood adversity among teen mothers and their children may be particularly important given the increased likelihood of teen mothers (as compared with older mothers) experiencing significant adversity exposures during childhood (Freed & SmithBattle, 2016; Madigan et al, 2014), and additional adversity experiences after childbirth (Okine et al, 2020; Stargel & Easterbrooks, 2020). Further, emerging evidence suggests that children's risk for compromised behavioral health may be linked to the parent's history of childhood adversity (Cooke et al, 2019; Lee et al, 2022). To better understand the intergenerational impact of maternal adversity on children's marijuana use behaviors, this study examines maternal mental health and parenting behaviors as mechanisms linking maternal childhood adversity to their children's marijuana use at age 17 years.…”

The Influences of Children’s and Maternal Childhood Adversity on Externalizing Problems in Early Adolescence

“…Mothers' childhood adversity may be a key distal factor, shaping children's developmental outcomes by biological factors (e.g., compromised allostasis and neural functioning and elevated inflammation in mothers; Danese & McEwen, 2011;Perry & Pollard, 1998), epigenetic ramifications (Lindsay et al, 2020;Monk et al, 2012), or maternal psychosocial distress (Doi et al, 2020;Letourneau et al, 2019;Russotti et al, 2021). Consistently, an emerging body of literature has documented the predictive capacity of maternal childhood adversity for externalizing problems in children at age 8 (Stargel & Easterbrooks, 2020;Stepleton et al, 2018) and age 9 (Schickedanz et al, 2018;Stepleton et al, 2018) and between ages 5 and 13 (Lee et al, 2022). None of these studies has focused on early adolescence.…”