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This Kind Of Stress May Have Important Implications For Children’s Emotional Development – Even Before Birth

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A deeper knowledge of stress during pregnancy may influence preventative initiatives, such as helping individuals maintain a constant level of calm before or at the outset of pregnancy.

A new Northwestern University study examined how a child’s developmental trajectory begins even before birth. It found that infants of mothers with greater stress variability—also known as lability—experienced more fear, sadness, and distress at three months of age than infants of mothers with less stress variability.

This is one of the first studies to evaluate mothers’ stress in real time on multiple occasions, allowing a closer look at whether variations in mothers’ stress across pregnancy matter for infant development.

The study appears in Infancy today.

“Research often examines stress as a static, unchanging construct—one that is either high or low, present or absent,” says lead study author Leigha MacNeill, “but most of us have a lot of ebbs and flows in our stress depending on what is going on around us.”

“That variability is inherent in our daily lives,” adds the lead author, “so this lability is capturing an important aspect of stress and offers insight into how to measure stress going forward. This is of particular importance as we work to closely capture the maternal-fetal environment as it relates to how babies develop over time.”

For example, a mother who stays at the same level of stress throughout her pregnancy and a mother whose stress level goes from very low to very high may end up with the same average level of stress during that time, but MacNeill says that average may not be the best way to show what the fetus is exposed to.

During pregnancy, when a mother fluctuates between extremes, “there may be something about that experience” that affects the child’s tendency toward negative emotions, according to MacNeill. The emotional development of children, according to the expert, may be significantly impacted by this type of stress pattern, which may reflect volatility in daily living experiences, unanticipated external stressors, or instability in how a mother views her lived experiences.

Helping people achieve a constant level of calm before or during pregnancy is one possible preventative measure, and knowing the nature of stress during pregnancy could influence such measures, MacNeill remarks. She says that stress management techniques, and ideally management, might be incorporated into those visits as the majority of expectant parents receive some sort of prenatal care.

Stress during the Pandemic

Scientists didn’t plan to study stress during pregnancy during a pandemic. According to MacNeill, they came across this “natural experiment” because some participants finished their assessments prior to the pandemic, others before and during the pandemic, and some entirely during the pandemic.

“We asked about general stress—not pandemic-related stress,” MacNeill adds. 

The authors of the study “took advantage of the occurrence of the pandemic during the course of the study to see if we could detect its impact on mothers’ experiences”.

And they found that the stress levels of moms were unrelated to when the pandemic occurred. No matter whether the mothers’ stress tests were taken before or after the pandemic, they all reported experiencing equal levels of stress.

The study

Using questionnaires sent to participants’ phones over the course of 14 weeks, the study’s authors evaluated the stress levels of pregnant women. They classified stress into three categories: baseline stress, average or normal levels of stress throughout the course of the 14-week period, and the amount that a person’s stress levels fluctuated over the course of the 14-week period (lability).

The scientists used a temperament test administered to mothers of three-month-old babies to measure the negative emotions of infants. Mothers responded to inquiries regarding their child’s sadness, distress at limitations, and fear (e.g., how much they clung to their parent when introduced to an unfamiliar adult). This resulted in an overall negative average score.

The study of stress fluctuations during pregnancy in relation to child development is a relatively new concept, and the authors of the study stated that it is still unclear how stress and the prenatal environment affect the developing fetus. If these trends remain true for families from different circumstances and with different forms of support, more research in bigger, more diverse samples is required, according to MacNeill.

Since the index is just three months old, MacNeill said, “we’d want to see how consistent their levels of negative affect are in the first year of life.” As infants grow, there are things parents can do to assist their child in navigating circumstances and learning to regulate and cope with negative emotions.

Image Credit: Getty

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