Category: Research Briefs

Stressed Out and Fed Up: The Relationship between Maternal Stress, Feeding Behaviors, and Executive Functioning

By Andrew Yuan |

Over 10% of children ages two to five have obesity, and these children are five times more likely than others to face obesity in adulthood. Research has suggested that stress and parental feeding practices play an influential role in childhood obesity. For example, dictating when, what, and how much a child eats can have negative impacts on eating habits, leading to a greater risk of developing obesity. Past studies have found parents who pressure children to eat certain foods can inadvertently increase a child’s dislike of those foods. For instance, a parent advocating to eat broccoli can lead to a child’s distaste of broccoli over time. This can result in adverse impacts on children’s long term food preferences, including healthy foods, and self-regulatory behaviors related to eating. How parents approach feeding practices and the factors that impact these behaviors are therefore important to explore to better understand the issue of childhood obesity. 

New research from Dr. Doan and colleagues looked into the relationship between stress and parental feeding behaviors in the mother-child dynamic. The team also investigated whether maternal executive functioning (EF)—a set of cognitive abilities essential for tasks like planning, attention, and self-control, which can be impaired by stress—plays a role in this relationship. Eighty mother and child pairs were organized into control and experimental groups. The researchers measured both groups’ executive functioning using a computer game. The researchers then induced a stress response in the mothers in the experimental group by having them give a speech and do mental math in front of an audience. Afterwards, the mothers sat with their children during a snack break, where the children were offered pretzels, gummy bears, and more. The researchers observed parent-child interactions during this snack break, assessing the mothers’ controlling feeding behavior. 

In line with past research, this study found a significant relationship between mothers’ stress and controlling behavior. Overall, stressed mothers exhibited more controlling feeding behaviors than those in the control group. However, when focusing on just mothers with high EF scores, this relationship did not hold. In other words, high EF buffered the effects of stress on mothers’ controlling feeding behaviors. This research provides strong evidence that stress shapes parents’ feeding habits, and that this link depends on EF abilities. This study and its findings, published in the research journal Appetite, provide key insight for understanding the factors shaping how parents feed their children, establishing a strong foundation for future research in this area.

A Mother’s Touch: Preschool-aged Children are Regulated by Positive Maternal Touch

By Angela Trinh |

Have you ever considered how something as simple as a hug can shape a child’s future?  Research findings from our lab suggest that touch can shape how children’s bodies respond to stress.

The researchers studied a diverse group of 114 mothers and their preschool-aged children, observing maternal touch in video recordings of their conversations about an emotionally negative event. The researchers recorded the frequency of positive, negative, and neutral touch behaviors from the mothers during these interactions. Additionally, the researchers challenged the children with a somewhat stressful task in order to measure stress reactivity – how the children responded physically and emotionally to stress – because of the important role it plays in one’s ability to manage and cope with stress throughout life.

The results showed that children who received more positive touch exhibited lower stress reactivity after the challenging tasks, while those with less positive touch reacted more strongly. In other words, positive touch helped regulate the children’s stress responses. This research, published in the Journal of Developmental Psychobiology, highlights the primary role of parents in regulating their children’s psychobiological systems during the preschool years.

Changes in Maternal Depression and Children’s Behavior Problems: Investigating the Role of COVID-19-Related Stressors, Hair Cortisol, and Dehydroepiandrosterone

By Kaia Stannard-Stockton |

The COVID-19 pandemic was a stressful time to be a parent, and every family reacted differently to the huge changes in their everyday lives. With this in mind, Dr. Stacey Doan and colleagues were interested in investigating COVID-19-related stressors and how mothers and their children were reacting to this increase in stress.

To do this, they asked mothers about a range of stressful events they may have experienced during the pandemic, including questions about whether the mothers had contracted COVID-19 or lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Child behavior was assessed by asking mothers  questions about their young child’s behavior that may indicate emotional distress or anxiety. Mothers were also asked about their own symptoms of depression. The researchers then collected hair samples from mothers in order to analyze changes in their stress hormones over time. These data were collected at two time points, first two years before the pandemic and then again between May and August of 2020.

Children in this study showed more anxious behaviors during the pandemic than they had two years prior. In addition, when families experienced more COVID-19 related stress, mothers also had more symptoms of depression. Finally, hair samples indicated that the mothers who showed more symptoms of depression also had higher stress hormone levels. These results may suggest that mothers with higher stress hormone levels were more vulnerable to the negative impacts of experiencing stressful events related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Together this work suggests that biological vulnerability factors interact with stressors to impact the well-being of mothers and consequently, their children.

 

Are Negative Emotions Bad for Our Health? Not as Much as We Think

by Ann Carrick |

From the angry CEO in the movies who has a heart attack to the numerous articles on WebMD suggesting why people should control their anxiety, negative emotions are commonly seen as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). While research has shown this is indeed the case for more intense negative emotions, the findings have been somewhat unclear for mild, everyday negative emotions. New research from Dr. Doan and colleagues suggests the relationship between negative emotions and CVD is more complicated.

The researchers gathered information from a large dataset where over 7400 British civil servants were tracked for 28 years. They looked at how negative emotions, such as depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and negative affect, influenced blood pressure at multiple points in time. The found that, as expected from previous research, high levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with higher blood pressure (with the exception of negative affect). However, and just as important, they also found evidence that the absence of negative emotions also contributes to higher blood pressure as compared to self-reported moderate levels of negative emotions.

Thanks to this research, which was just published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, we now know that you don’t want to completely shove away those negative emotions to avoid cardiovascular disease. Some of those mild, daily, negative emotions are a natural part of life and experiencing and being aware of them may be beneficial for health. This research gives more encouragement in looking at the whole person when preventing CVD, not just simple cut-off points, and clears the way for more informed interventions in the future.

Read more about research from the Berger Institute.

When Aggression is Protective: The Health Benefits of Destructive Behavior During Adversity

Ann Carrick |

Behaviors such as bullying or stealing are usually considered destructive. Moreover, these types of behaviors are more likely to be seen in children who grow up with more adversity. Once thought as maladaptive, recent research suggests there may be some important benefits in certain contexts. Evolutionary approaches suggest that these behaviors are important for survival. In addition, there is some evidence that aggression can lower stress levels. For example, in multiple rat studies, researchers have found that biting suppresses the stress-induced chemical and hormonal response in the brain and body. Destructive behavior in general can also increase access to resources in some contexts, such as material goods gained from stealing or social status and sexual opportunity from aggression.

Given this body of work, Dr. Stacey Doan and colleagues wondered whether destructive and disobedient behavior, with its survival value in harsher contexts and effect on stress, might influence the physical health of those facing early adversity. The researchers surveyed 260 children on various risk factors for adversity and measured their chronic stress, also known as allostatic load, through urine samples, body mass index measurements, and blood pressure readings. Their guardians were also surveyed on various behaviors of the children, such as stealing, destruction of property, disobedience, and bullying.

The researchers found that these destructive behaviors can buffer the effect of adversity on physical health. In other words, among those with high levels of adversity, those who are destructive or disobedient show less wear and tear physiologically than those who are less destructive. They also found that these findings are more pronounced for men than for women. This gender difference was thought to be due to the idea that aggression is more encouraged and accepted in males than females.

This research, to be published soon in Nature: Scientific Reports, is an exciting step forward in understanding these behaviors more holistically and how they may contribute to the regulation of stress. Future researchers can build off of this new line of research and pave the way for more informed and effective interventions.