Year: 2022
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Greater exposure to racial/ethnic discrimination among pregnant Black American women is associated with elevated prenatal depressive symptomatology, poorer prenatal sleep quality, and poorer child health outcomes. Given the transdiagnostic importance of early childhood sleep health, we examined associations between pregnant women’s lifetime exposure to racial/ethnic discrimination and their two-year-old children’s sleep health. We also examined women’s gendered racial stress as a predictor variable. In exploratory analyses, we examined prenatal sleep quality and prenatal depressive symptoms as potential mediators of the prior associations. We utilized data from a sample of Black American women and children (n = 205). Women self-reported their lifetime experiences of discrimination during early pregnancy, their sleep quality and depressive symptoms during mid-pregnancy, and their children’s sleep health at age two. Hierarchical linear multiple regression models were fit to examine direct associations between women’s experiences of discrimination and children’s sleep health. We tested our mediation hypotheses using a parallel mediator model. Higher levels of gendered racial stress, but not racial/ethnic discrimination, were directly associated with poorer sleep health in children. Higher levels of racial/ethnic discrimination were indirectly associated with poorer sleep health in children, via women’s prenatal depressive symptomatology, but not prenatal sleep quality. Clinical efforts to mitigate the effects of discrimination on Black American women may benefit women’s prenatal mental health and their children’s sleep health.
Institutions: Emory University, Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,618
Funders: National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute on Aging, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH Office of the Director, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Awards: G1535368911, Atlanta ECHO Pediatric Cohort: Examining -omics pathways from prenatal exposures to child neurodevelopment, G2836095311, Maintenance and Enhancement of the Atlanta African American Maternal-Child Cohort: Exposome Profiling via High-resolution Metabolomics and Integration of Microbiome-Metabolome-Epigenome Data, A Mixed Methods Approach for Developing Culturally and Ecologically Appropriate Interventions for Improving Sleep Health in a Community-Based Sample of African Americans, Biobehavioral Determinants of the Microbiome and Preterm Birth in Black Women, Emory Specialized Center of Research Excellence (SCORE) on Sex Differences, Institutional Career Development Core, Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance (Georgia CTSA)
OpenAlex ID: W4220945663