A Genetically Informed Study of the Interaction Between Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Parental Depression in Risk for Children’s Emerging Externalizing Problems
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Prenatal Alcohol Exposure (PAE) has been associated with children’s externalizing problems (e.g., D’Onofrio et al.,2007); however, it remains unclear whether low/moderate PAE has a meaningful effect on children’s outcomes. Perhaps low/moderate PAE increases children’s vulnerability to externalizing but only in the context of postnatal adversity, such as parental depression. An adoption study is advantageous for addressing questions about the independent influence of PAE, as genetic and postnatal contextual risk can be disentangled from one another and their interactive associations may be assessed. Primary aims of the current study were to examine independent and interactive associations between PAE and postnatal exposure to parental depressive symptoms in relation to child externalizing problems at early school-age, after accounting for inherited risk. The role of inhibitory control (IC) as a possible mediator of the relationship between PAE and externalizing was also examined. Study data came from the Early Growth and Development Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal adoption study. Reported alcohol consumption was lower than expected. There was no evidence for an association between PAE and children’s externalizing, independently or in interaction with adoptive parent depression. There was also no effect of PAE on children’s IC. Adoptive mother and father depressive symptoms were independently associated with children’s externalizing. IC at 27 months was negatively related to child externalizing. Findings did not support the hypothesis that low/moderate PAE would be associated with children’s externalizing, regardless of the presence of postnatal contextual adversity. Study findings are novel because of the adoption design, in which the parents providing the postnatal environment were genetically unrelated to the child and did not provide the prenatal environment. However, adoptive families were relatively low-risk, thus findings may not generalize to families facing higher levels of postnatal contextual adversity.
Author: Katherine A. Hails
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2588606439