Prenatal Cannabis Use and Offspring Autism-Related Behaviors: Examining Maternal Stress as a Moderator in a Black American Cohort

Abstract

Prenatal cannabis use and maternal stress have been proposed as risk factors for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Black mothers and mothers of lower socioeconomic status (SES) may be especially likely to experience high levels of stress. This study examined the impact of prenatal cannabis use and maternal stress (i.e., prenatal distress, racial discrimination, and lower SES) on child ASD-related behaviors in a sample of 172 Black mother-child pairs. We found that prenatal stress was significantly associated with ASD-related behaviors. Prenatal cannabis use did not predict ASD-related behaviors and did not interact with maternal stress to predict ASD-related behaviors. These findings replicate previous work on prenatal stress-ASD associations and add to the limited literature on prenatal cannabis-ASD associations in Black samples.