Early Life Caregiving and Health: Testing the Impact of Parenting Across Two Generations
Early caregiving relationships can have effects that extend well beyond childhood. Experiences of stability, responsiveness, unpredictability, or disruption may shape how individuals regulate stress and form relationships later in life. An important question is whether these early relational experiences may also influence how people eventually care for their own children.
In the MRI-funded project Early Life Caregiving and Health: Testing the Impact of Parenting Across Two Generations, Dr. Elysia Poggi Davis (University of Denver), together with Dr. Melissa Nevarez-Brewster and Dr. Jessica A. Marino, investigated how mothers’ childhood caregiving experiences may become biologically embedded and relate to parenting in the next generation. Drawing on longitudinal data from the Care Project, the study brings together different measures of early caregiving experiences, maternal stress physiology during pregnancy, and observed maternal sensitivity after birth.
Much of the research on intergenerational processes has focused on exposure to adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. This project considers a broader range of early relational environments, including both childhood unpredictability and positive childhood experiences. Unpredictability is an understudied form of early adversity which is characterized by random variation in events or exposures, such as changes in caregivers, inconsistent patterns of parental behavior, or lack of daily routines. In contrast, positive childhood experiences include relationships and environments characterized by dependable care, friendship, support from adults, and a sense of safety and stability.
The researchers proposed that maternal stress physiology during pregnancy may represent one pathway connecting these early experiences with later caregiving. In particular, the study examined cortisol, a hormone involved in the regulation of the body’s stress response, asking whether maternal childhood caregiving environments remain associated with maternal biological functioning years later during pregnancy.
The study draws on a diverse cohort of participants recruited during pregnancy through obstetrics and gynecology clinics in the Denver metropolitan area. Participants reported retrospectively on their childhood experiences, while hair samples collected at multiple points during pregnancy provided measures of cortisol and other stress- and reproduction-related hormones. MRI funding supported laboratory analysis of 526 hair samples. At six months postpartum, mothers and infants participated in recorded play interactions that were coded for maternal sensitivity, including mothers’ responsiveness to their infants’ cues.
The findings suggest distinct associations between early relational environments and maternal physiology. Mothers reporting greater childhood unpredictability had higher cortisol levels during mid-to-late pregnancy. This association remained after accounting for other forms of childhood adversity, suggesting that unpredictability may represent a unique dimension of early experience with implications for stress physiology that is not fully captured by traditional measures of adversity.
Positive childhood experiences showed a different pattern. Mothers who reported more benevolent childhood experiences had lower cortisol levels during late pregnancy. Considered together, these findings suggest that early environments may be associated with later biological regulation in more than one direction: unpredictability and instability may be linked with heightened stress physiology, while supportive and dependable childhood experiences may be associated with a different physiological profile.
The researchers also identified an association between prenatal physiology and subsequent caregiving. Lower maternal cortisol during pregnancy predicted greater maternal sensitivity during mother–infant interactions at six months postpartum. This finding raises the possibility that biological processes during pregnancy may be one component of the pathway connecting mothers’ earlier experiences with the relationships they later develop with their own children.
The next phase of the research will test this intergenerational pathway more directly by examining whether prenatal cortisol helps account for associations between mothers’ childhood caregiving experiences and their later parenting behavior. The hormonal data generated through the project will also allow the research team to investigate biological processes beyond cortisol.
Importantly, the project examines not only the transmission of risk but also the potential transmission of protection. Stable and supportive childhood relationships may have implications that extend into adulthood, pregnancy, and subsequent caregiving. This perspective complements related MRI-supported research examining positive childhood experiences as potential protective factors across generations.
Findings from this work have also contributed to a peer-reviewed publication examining the role of positive childhood experiences in prenatal mental health. Published in the Journal of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, the study found that positive childhood experiences were associated with fewer prenatal mental health symptoms and lower rates of depression and anxiety diagnoses, even when accounting for childhood maltreatment.
Read the publication: Positive Childhood Experiences Relate to Prenatal Mental Health Symptoms and Diagnoses Independent of Childhood Maltreatment
By integrating early relational experiences, prenatal biology, and observed mother–infant interaction, this project contributes to a multigenerational understanding of caregiving. Rather than viewing parenting as beginning with the birth of a child, the study examines how caregiving relationships may be connected across developmental periods and generations—and how experiences of both instability and support may become part of the relational context in which the next generation develops.