Motherhood Biographies and Midlife Women's Health

摘要 研究表明，自20世纪80年代中期以来，中年女性的健康差距不断扩大。然而， 这些健康梯度的作用机制尚不完全清楚。尽管约85%的 今天的中年女性(40-50岁)是母亲，是成为母亲的途径和背景--我们称之为母亲 母亲传记--在许多与健康相关的维度上变得越来越多样化， 包括第一个孩子的年龄、产次、生育间隔和关系状况。尽管有证据表明其中每一个 母性传记的个体维度在生命过程的早期塑造了母亲的健康，他们的时间更长- 对中年产妇健康的长期影响在很大程度上被忽视了。此外，到目前为止的研究已经 未能审视中年母子关系特征(如同居、关系质量) 解释或说明母亲传记对中年女性健康的影响。什么是未知的 在科学文献中，母亲传记和中年母亲背景是如何与健康相关的 和中年妇女之间的健康差距，以及这些影响如何因教育和种族族裔而异。这个 建议的R01研究，母亲传记和中年妇女的健康，将是第一个 全面确定母亲传记和中年母亲背景对 按教育和种族划分的中年妇女健康状况。我们使用具有全国代表性的数据 1979-2016年全国青年纵向研究的浪潮(NLSY79；N=4,271名妇女)。这些数据是 他们在解决我们的研究目标方面的能力无与伦比，因为他们包括具有全国代表性的纵向 数据-家庭与健康研究的黄金标准-允许我们从青春期开始跟踪女性 到50多岁，追踪母亲和健康的关键时刻。我们研究了一系列全面的 健康变量，以捕捉中年时发现的关键健康差异，包括与a)健康相关 行为，b)身体健康，c)心理和认知健康。这个项目的创新之处在于它 通过理论和检验，提出了中年健康梯度这一令人困惑的难题的新解决方案 母亲的传记和背景是健康结果在中年分层的关键途径。 这项提议将对证明中年健康的风险因素和机制产生重大影响。 差距。此外，鉴于教育和种族也与健康差距和 作为母亲，这项研究对于检验教育和种族如何使母亲传记多样化具有重要意义。 种族在扩大中年健康差距方面发挥了作用。审视今生的母性传记 课程结合点帮助我们更好地理解随着这一代人进入晚年而出现的健康差距。因为 随着年龄的增长，健康差距会越来越大，因此有可能也有必要找出造成这种差异的社会原因 中年的小健康问题，以便在晚年改善更大的健康问题。

Abstract Research shows widening health disparities among midlife women since the mid-1980s. However, the mechanisms through which these health gradients operate are not fully known. Although about 85 percent of midlife (ages 40-50) women today are mothers, the pathways to and contexts of motherhood—what we call motherhood biographies—have become increasingly diverse across many dimensions relevant to health, including age at first birth, parity, spacing of children, and relationship status. Despite evidence that each of these individual dimensions of the motherhood biography shape maternal health early in the life course, their longer- term consequences for maternal health at midlife have been largely ignored. Additionally, research to date has failed to examine whether midlife mother-child relationship characteristics (e.g., coresidence, relationship quality) either explain or condition the impact of motherhood biographies on midlife women's health. What is unknown in the scientific literature is how motherhood biographies and midlife motherhood contexts are related to health and health disparities among midlife women and how these effects vary by education and race-ethnicity. The proposed R01 study, Motherhood Biographies and Midlife Women's Health, will be the first to comprehensively determine how motherhood biographies and midlife motherhood contexts matter for midlife women's health by education and race-ethnicity. We use nationally-representative data from the 1979-2016 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79; N=4,271 women). The data are unmatched in their ability to address our research aims as they include nationally representative longitudinal data—the gold standard in research on family and health—and allow us to follow women from adolescence to their 50s, tracking key moments in motherhood and health. We examine a comprehensive collection of health variables in order to capture the critical heath disparities found at midlife including related to a) health behaviors, b) physical health, and c) mental and cognitive health. This project is innovative in that it presents new solutions to the perplexing puzzle of the midlife health gradient by theorizing and examining motherhood biographies and contexts as key pathways though which health outcomes are stratified at midlife. This proposal will have a significant impact in demonstrating risk factors and mechanisms for midlife health disparities. Additionally, given that education and race-ethnicity are also associated with health disparities and motherhood, this study is significant in testing how diversifying motherhood biographies by education and race- ethnicity play a role in the widening of midlife health disparities. Examining motherhood biographies at this life course juncture helps us to better understand health disparities as this generation ages into later-life. Because health disparities widen with age, it is both possible and imperative to identify the social causes of what may be small health issues in midlife in order to ameliorate larger health issues in later life.