Boston College, School of Social Work, Chestnut Hill, MA.
Child Obes. 2020 Jan;16(1):26-33. doi: 10.1089/chi.2019.0121. Epub 2019 Sep 4.
Childhood overweight and obesity have become a primary social and public health concern. Over the past 30 years, rates of childhood overweight and obesity in the United States have increased dramatically from 6% to 35%. A potential risk factor of interest is maternal depression. To date, there are mixed findings available on the association between maternal depression and childhood obesity development, and there is a dearth of longitudinal research available. To address these gaps in the literature, this study investigated the association between maternal depression at age 1 and/or age 3 years and childhood obesity longitudinally. This study used data from the Fragile Families Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to investigate the research questions. FFCWS is a national dataset that has information on 4898 women, and their children, from predominantly nonmarital, low-income minority groups in the United States. This study used information collected at the birth of the child (wave 1) through age 9 years (wave 5). The analytic sample consisted of 3500 mother-children dyads. Group-based trajectory modeling and multivariable logistic regression were used. The results indicated that there was no association between maternal depression and childhood obesity development in this sample of low-income and mostly minority participants. Maternal prepregnancy BMI, number of biological children in the house, and Latino ethnicity were significant predictors of risky growth trajectories in the full sample. Suggestions for designing childhood obesity prevention interventions based on research are discussed.
儿童超重和肥胖已成为主要的社会和公共卫生问题。在过去的 30 年中，美国儿童超重和肥胖的比例从 6%急剧上升到 35%。一个潜在的相关风险因素是母亲的抑郁。迄今为止，关于母亲抑郁与儿童肥胖发展之间的关联存在混合的研究结果，并且缺乏纵向研究。为了解决文献中的这些空白，本研究从纵向角度调查了母亲在 1 岁和/或 3 岁时的抑郁与儿童肥胖之间的关系。本研究使用了来自脆弱家庭儿童健康研究（FFCWS）的数据来调查这些研究问题。FFCWS 是一个全国性数据集，包含了美国主要来自非婚、低收入少数族裔群体的 4898 名妇女及其子女的信息。本研究使用了在儿童出生时（第 1 波）到 9 岁时（第 5 波）收集的信息。分析样本包括 3500 对母子对。使用了基于群组的轨迹建模和多变量逻辑回归。结果表明，在这个低收入和主要是少数族裔参与者的样本中，母亲抑郁与儿童肥胖发展之间没有关联。母亲的孕前 BMI、家中的亲生子女数量和拉丁裔种族是全样本中风险增长轨迹的显著预测因素。根据研究结果，讨论了设计儿童肥胖预防干预措施的建议。
