Mild perinatal adversities moderate the association between maternal harsh parenting and hair cortisol: Evidence for differential susceptibility

Abstract

It has been shown that following exposure to mild perinatal adversity, children have greater susceptibility to both the negative and positive aspects of their subsequent environment. In a large population-based cohort study (N = 1,776), we investigated whether mild perinatal adversity moderated the association between maternal harsh parenting and children's hair cortisol levels, a biomarker of chronic stress. Mild perinatal adversity was defined as late preterm birth (gestational age at birth of 34-37 weeks, 6 days) or small for gestational age (birth weight between the 2.5th and 10th percentile for full term gestational age). Harsh parenting was assessed by maternal self-report at 3 years. Children's hair cortisol concentrations were measured from hair samples collected at age 6. There were no significant bivariate associations between mild perinatal adversities and harsh parenting and hair cortisol. However, mild perinatal adversities moderated the association between maternal harsh parenting and hair cortisol levels. Children with mild perinatal adversity had lower cortisol levels if parented more harshly and higher cortisol levels in the absence of harsh parenting than children who did not experience mild perinatal adversity. These results provide further evidence that mild perinatal adversity is a potential marker of differential susceptibility to environmental influences.

Hair cortisol as a measure of the stress response to social adversity in young children

“…In 11 studies that examined between one and four indicators of adversity, four reported no associations with hair cortisol (Boeckel et al, 2017;Flom, et al, 2017;Gerber et al, 2017;Olstad et al, 2016), five reported associations with one indicator (Ouellette et al, 2015;Palmer et al, 2013;Ursache et al, 2017;Vaghri et al, 2013;Vliegenthart et al, 2016), and two studies reported associations with two indicators (Rippe et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017). Where associations are reported, often they are not replicated by other studies.…”

“…These findings draw on studies which have primarily used cohorts unselected for experience of adversity (Karlén et al, 2015;Rippe et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017). These findings draw on studies which have primarily used cohorts unselected for experience of adversity (Karlén et al, 2015;Rippe et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017).…”

“…Cross-sectional associations between adversity and higher child hair cortisol have been demonstrated for a small number of sociodemographic characteristics in studies of 1-, 4-, and 6-year-old children, including low parent education (Ursache, Merz, Melvin, Meyer, & Noble, 2017;Vaghri et al, 2013), low family income (Rippe et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017), maternal unemployment (Karlén et al, 2015), and parents being of an ethnic minority (Palmer et al, 2013;Rippe et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017). Of the few studies to examine psychosocial indicators of adversity, including maternal mental health at age 1, 7, and 10-17 years (Flom, St John, Meyer, & Tarullo, 2017;Olstad et al, 2016;Ouellette et al, 2015;Palmer et al, 2013), and family violence at 8 years (Boeckel, Viola, Daruy-Filho, Martinez, & Grassi-Oliveira, 2017), one study has shown evidence for an association between poor maternal mental health and higher child hair cortisol at 1 year (Palmer et al, 2013).…”

“…Of the few studies to examine psychosocial indicators of adversity, including maternal mental health at age 1, 7, and 10-17 years (Flom, St John, Meyer, & Tarullo, 2017;Olstad et al, 2016;Ouellette et al, 2015;Palmer et al, 2013), and family violence at 8 years (Boeckel, Viola, Daruy-Filho, Martinez, & Grassi-Oliveira, 2017), one study has shown evidence for an association between poor maternal mental health and higher child hair cortisol at 1 year (Palmer et al, 2013). However, studies of children aged 1, 6, 7, 8, and 3-18 years have also reported no association between individual indicators of adversity and child hair cortisol, including education (Gerber et al, 2017;Karlén et al, 2015;Rippe et al, 2016;Vliegenthart et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017), income (Ursache et al, 2017;Vaghri et al, 2013), family violence (Boeckel et al, 2017), and mental health (Flom, et al, 2017;Olstad et al, 2016;Ouellette et al, 2015). Only two studies have examined cross-sectional associations between cumulative total counts of adverse exposures and child hair cortisol, both of which found evidence of an association between a higher total adversity count and higher child hair cortisol at 1 year (Karlén et al, 2015) and 9 years of age (Simmons et al, 2016).…”

“…As such, many studies have investigated associations with only a small number of socioeconomic adversity indicators, such as low parental education, low income, or ethnicity (Rippe et al, 2016;Ursache et al, 2017;Vaghri et al, 2013;Vliegenthart et al, 2016;Windhorst et al, 2017), without capturing the broad spectrum of experiences associated with social adversity. Studies to date have not examined child hair cortisol as a measure of stress response to a broad range of both socioeconomic and psychosocial indicators of adversity, including ACEs, in a single cohort.…”