Prenatal substance exposure and maternal hostility from pregnancy to toddlerhood: Associations with temperament profiles at 16 months of age.

Brendan D Ostlund,Koraly E Pérez-Edgar,Stephanie Godleski,Pamela Schuetze,Rina D Eiden,Shannon Shisler,Sarah Terrell

doi:10.1017/s0954579421001000

Abstract

We investigated whether infant temperament was predicted by level of and change in maternal hostility, a putative transdiagnostic vulnerability for psychopathology, substance use, and insensitive parenting. A sample of women (N = 247) who were primarily young, low-income, and had varying levels of substance use prenatally (69 nonsmokers, 81 tobacco-only smokers, and 97 tobacco and marijuana smokers) reported their hostility in the third trimester of pregnancy and at 2, 9, and 16 months postpartum, and their toddler’s temperament and behavior problems at 16 months. Maternal hostility decreased from late pregnancy to 16 months postpartum. Relative to pregnant women who did not use substances, women who used both marijuana and tobacco prenatally reported higher levels of hostility while pregnant and exhibited less change in hostility over time. Toddlers who were exposed to higher levels of prenatal maternal hostility were more likely to be classified in temperament profiles that resemble either irritability or inhibition, identified via latent profile analysis. These two profiles were each associated with more behavior problems concurrently, though differed in their association with competence. Our results underscore the utility of transdiagnostic vulnerabilities in understanding the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology risk and are discussed in regards to the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework.

Highlights

A mother’s mood during the transition from pregnancy to parenthood may be characterized by periods of both stability and change
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) – an initiative aimed at describing patterns of both dysfunction and adaptive functioning across levels of analysis to clarify how psychopathologies manifest across development (Franklin, Jamieson, Glenn, & Nock, 2015; Insel et al, 2010; Kozak & Cuthbert, 2016)
Our findings advance our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology risk in two important ways

Summary

Introduction

A mother’s mood during the transition from pregnancy to parenthood may be characterized by periods of both stability and change. Pre- and early postnatal maternal emotion marked by anxiety has been linked to infant negative affect and childhood internalizing symptoms (e.g., Lawrence, Creswell, Cooper, & Murray, 2020; Spry et al, 2020) These effects likely vary by the type, timing, and intensity of a pregnant woman’s pre- or postnatal emotional experience, which itself may be exacerbated by other stressors, such as substance use and poverty (e.g., Eiden et al, 2011). There is a dearth of evidence describing transdiagnostic vulnerabilities among pregnant women To address this shortcoming, Lin et al (2019) examined whether a pregnant woman’s level of emotion dysregulation, a known contributor to psychopathology risk across the lifespan (Beauchaine, 2015; Cole, Hall, & Hajal, 2013), was associated with measures of mental health and physiological responding to stress. Ostlund et al (2019) found that newborns whose mother reported higher levels of emotion dysregulation while pregnant exhibited blunted arousal and attention soon after birth

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