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Hair cortisol in mother–child dyads: examining the roles of maternal parenting and stress in the context of early childhood adversity

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Abstract

Physiological stress is thought to be one way that early adversity may impact children's health. How this occurs may be related to parental factors such as mothers’ own stress and parenting behaviour. Hair cortisol offers a novel method for examining long-term physiological stress in mother–child dyads. The current study used hair cortisol to examine the role that maternal physiological stress and parenting behaviours play in explaining any effects of adversity on young children’s physiological stress. This cross-sectional study comprised 603 mother–child dyads at child age 2 years, recruited during pregnancy for their experience of adversity through an Australian nurse home visiting trial. Hair cortisol data were available for 438 participating mothers (73%) and 319 (53%) children. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to define composite exposures of economic (e.g. unemployment, financial hardship) and psychosocial (e.g. poor mental health, family violence) adversity, and positive maternal parenting behaviour (e.g. warm, responsive). Structural equation modelling examined maternal mediating pathways through which adversity was associated with children’s physiological stress. Results of the structural model showed that higher maternal and child physiological stress (hair cortisol) were positively associated with one another. Parenting behaviour was not associated with children’s physiological stress. There was no evidence of any mediating pathways by which economic or psychosocial adversity were associated with children’s physiological stress. The independent association identified between maternal and child hair cortisol suggests that young children’s physiological stress may not be determined by exogenous environmental exposures; endogenous genetic factors may play a greater role.

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Acknowledgements

The “right@home” sustained nurse home visiting trial is a research collaboration between the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY); the Translational Research and Social Innovation (TReSI) Group at Western Sydney University; and the Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH), which is a department of The Royal Children's Hospital and a research group of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. We thank all families, the researchers, nurses and social care practitioners working on the right@home trial, the antenatal clinic staff at participating hospitals who helped facilitate the research, and the Expert Reference Group for their guidance in designing the trial.

Funding

“right@home” is funded by the Victorian Department of Education and Training, the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services, the Ian Potter Foundation, Sabemo Trust, Sidney Myer Fund, the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC, Project Grant 1079418). Research at the MCRI is supported by the Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Program. HB is supported by an MCRI Research Group Scholarship and an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. SG is supported by NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship 1155290, FM by NHMRC Career Development Fellowship 1111160 and RG by NHMRC Career Development Fellowship 1109889. The funding sources had no involvement in the collection, analysis or decision to submit this article for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia

    Hannah Elise Bryson, Fiona Mensah, Sharon Goldfeld, Anna M. H. Price & Rebecca Giallo

  2. Centre for Community Child Health, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia

    Hannah Elise Bryson, Sharon Goldfeld & Anna M. H. Price

  3. Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia

    Hannah Elise Bryson, Fiona Mensah, Sharon Goldfeld, Anna M. H. Price & Rebecca Giallo

  4. The Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia

    Fiona Mensah

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  1. Hannah Elise Bryson
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Correspondence to Hannah Elise Bryson.

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Bryson, H.E., Mensah, F., Goldfeld, S. et al. Hair cortisol in mother–child dyads: examining the roles of maternal parenting and stress in the context of early childhood adversity. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 30, 563–577 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01537-0

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