Modeling parenting stress trajectories among low-income young mothers across the child's second and third years: Factors accounting for stability and change.

Abstract

Abstract:This study investigated parenting stress trajectories among low-income young mothers and the factors that are associated with change and stability of parenting stress as children aged from 14 to 36 months old. With a sample of 580 young mothers who applied to the Early Head Start Program, growth mixture modeling identified 3 trajectory classes of parenting stress: a chronically high group (7% of the sample), an increasing group (10% of the sample), and a decreasing group (83% of the sample). Maternal personal resources distinguished between the increasing and decreasing classes, whereas maternal personal resources, child characteristics, and contextual influences explained differences between the chronically high and decreasing trajectory classes. Findings suggest that for interventions to be effective, programs need to assess maternal, child, and contextual factors to better address the particular unique needs of young mothers.

The overweight/obesity - depression links over the life course

“…Thirteen articles [1,9,[51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] were included for systematic review and meta-analysis. All the included studies were prospective studies that examined the association between depression and obesity, of these, seven studies examined depression leading to obesity [1,9,51,52,54,55,57] and six studies investigated obesity leading to depression [53,56,[58][59][60][61]. Three of the studies presented the longitudinal bidirectional data [1,53,56].…”

“…Another plausible mechanism may be concern in relation to weight gain/loss and shape changes associated with the advancement of pregnancy. Some pregnant women may continue to acknowledge their pre-pregnancy standards for appearance during pregnancy and also feel concern about meeting these standards after birth [60]. A concern with body changes from pre-pregnancy can promote body image dissatisfaction which may increase during the postpartum [22,61] and may play an important role in the development of depression.…”

“…Three studies [53,58,59] reported this association for both males and females and three other studies reported data only for females [56,60,61]. Participants were diverse in relation to age, race, ethnicity, social and demographic characteristics, although the majority of females were caucasian.…”

“…After the first episode of depression, percentage estimates for further episodes do vary greatly and have been reported to range from 40% to 85%, depending upon the sample and measures used [58]. Clinical settings showed that the chronicity of depression varies from between 21% to 37% after one year, and between 60% and 75% after five years of follow-up; but these comprise the most severe, pervasive and recurrent cases [59][60][61]. In contrast, in general population samples the proportion of individuals reporting chronic depression has been found to be between 40% and 53% after 15-30 years of follow-up [62][63][64].…”

“…The mean age varied from 11 to 15 years and follow-up time from 1 up to 20 years. For BMI at baseline, three studies [53,58,59] relied on self-reported information and the remainder of the studies used measured height and weight [1,56,60,61]. At follow-up, four studies assessed depression using depressive symptoms [53,56,58,61] and the rest of the studies used clinical diagnoses [1,59,60].…”