Maternal experiences of racial discrimination and child weight status in the first 3 years of life

Abstract

Among US racial/ethnic minority women, we examined associations between maternal experiences of racial discrimination and child growth in the first 3 years of life. We analyzed data from Project Viva, a pre-birth cohort study. We restricted analyses to 539 mother-infant pairs; 294 were Black, 127 Hispanic, 110 Asian and 8 from additional racial/ethnic groups. During pregnancy, mothers completed the Experiences of Discrimination survey that measured lifetime experiences of racial discrimination in diverse domains. We categorized responses as 0, 1-2 or ≥3 domains. Main outcomes were birth weight for gestational age z-score; weight for age (WFA) z-score at 6 months of age; and at 3 years of age, body mass index (BMI) z-score. In multivariable analyses, we adjusted for maternal race/ethnicity, nativity, education, age, pre-pregnancy BMI, household income and child sex and age. Among this cohort of mostly (58.2%) US-born and economically non-impoverished mothers, 33% reported 0 domains of discrimination, 33% reported discrimination in 1-2 domains and 35% reported discrimination in ≥3 domains. Compared with children whose mothers reported no discrimination, those whose mothers reported ≥3 domains had lower birth weight for gestational age z-score (β -0.25; 95% CI: -0.45, -0.04), lower 6 month WFA z-score (β -0.34; 95% CI: -0.65, -0.03) and lower 3-year BMI z-score (β -0.33; 95% CI: -0.66, 0.00). In conclusion, we found that among this cohort of US racial/ethnic minority women, mothers' report of experiencing lifetime discrimination in ⩾ 3 domains was associated with lower fetal growth, weight at 6 months and 3-year BMI among their offspring.

Ethnic discrimination predicts poor self-rated health and cortisol in pregnancy: Insights from New Zealand

“…Maternal experience of discrimination has elsewhere been associated with outcomes such as reduced offspring fetal growth, weight at 6 months and BMI at 4 years of age (Dixon et al, 2012). There is a rapidly growing literature demonstrating that maternal stress or depression in pregnancy predict offspring HPA-axis function in infancy (O'Connor et al, 2013;Oberlander et al, 2008;Tollenaar et al, 2011).…”

Systematic review and meta-analysis on the relationship between prenatal stress and metabolic syndrome intermediate phenotypes

“…1. Full text review yielded 24 publications for inclusion into the systematic review and meta-analyses [35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58]. The list of excluded studies with reasons for exclusion is available in SI 5.…”

“…We performed two separate meta-analyses for BMI and body fat datasets. Table 1 altogether with SI 6 illustrate the characteristics of the 19 included studies [35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,53,55,56,58]. Thirteen studies included a relatively similar amount of males and females.…”

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Inadequate Gestational Weight Gain Differ by Pre-pregnancy Weight

“…Black and Hispanic women and children in the United States (US) have disproportionately more adverse birth outcomes and obesity (1-3). Gestational weight gain (GWG) disparities may be one explanation.…”

“…In mothers, excessive GWG is associated with antenatal and intra-partum complications (4) and obesity postpartum (4,13,14) and later in life (17,18). Many of these outcomes are also more common in Black and Hispanic populations (3,19). At the other extreme, inadequate GWG is associated with small for gestational age (SGA) infants (4,13,14), and preterm deliveries (4,14,20).…”