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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Jamie L. Lynch, BS, Diane B. Patel, MA, and Frank L. Mott, PhD. Center for Human Resources Research, The Ohio State University, 921 Chatham Lane, Suite 100, Columbus, OH 43221, 614-442-7334, jlynch@chrr.osu.edu

Objective: To determine the inter-generational propensity of children of young mothers to repeat the pre- and post-natal behaviors of their mothers. Background: Public health programs place an increasing emphasis on pre-natal care and early childhood parenting on outcomes for children. A question unaddressed is how much of an individual's current parenting behavior is influenced by the mothering received as a young child. Design/Methods: The NLSY Young Adult Cohort is a representative sample of children born to women aged 14-22 in 1979. These women make up the NLSY79 Main Youth Cohort. The NLSY(YA) is uniquely suited to this analysis as it contains 1335 young adults who have already had at least one biological child. The data contains self-reported measures of pre-natal care (including, but limited to, doctor visits, substance use, and gestation detail) and post-natal attentiveness (such as well-care visits, breast feeding, and parental intellectual and socio-emotional connections with their children including items drawn from the HOME-SF scale) for both the Main Youth and Young Adult cohorts, allowing exploration of the impact of prior mother behaviors on a child's current parenting practices. The Data offers controls for confounding demographic and attitudinal measures for both young women and their Young Adults such as, but not limited to, age at first birth, family income, educational attainment, religious attachment, family and gender attitudes, and substance use across the life course.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this presentation participants will be aware of (
• the overt connections between a young mother’s parenting and her child’s current parenting behavior and (
• the need for public policy and programs to focus on the intergenerational transmission of parenting values and behavior across the lifecycle.

Keywords: Prenatal Care, Reproductive Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered