Mechanisms Linking Family Violence and Infant Health and Development in the Perinatal Period - PROJECT SUMMARY/ ABSTRACT
Family violence, which includes intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment, is a significant public
health problem and disproportionately affects low-income and minoritized women and children under one year
of age. Family violence during the perinatal period, the months during and after pregnancy, has been linked to
numerous health disparities intergenerationally, including elevated stress in mothers as well as increased risk of
poor cardiometabolic health and socioemotional development in infants. IPV during pregnancy and its
associations with maternal stress may also place infants at greater risk of child maltreatment and interfere with
mother-infant coregulation of physiology and behavior, in turn negatively affecting infant health and development.
Moreover, individuals differ in how they respond to adverse environments, with extant models suggesting that
maternal and infant resilience factors interact with family violence to confer vulnerability to risk or to promote
resilient outcomes. What remains unknown, however, is an advanced understanding of the stress regulation and
interpersonal mechanisms that link characteristics of prenatal IPV to subsequent child maltreatment and infant
outcomes postpartum. Therefore, in this longitudinal and prospective study, we propose to examine a
mechanistic model highlighting biological, behavioral, and social pathways to understand the role of family
violence in the progression of infant cardiometabolic health and socioemotional development during the perinatal
period. The proposed study will collect self-report, medical record, observational, and biobehavioral data from
330 low-income, racially and ethnically diverse families across 5 time points: 1st (T1), 2nd (T2), and 3rd (T3)
trimesters and 6 (T4) and 12 months (T5) postpartum. Our innovative dyadic approach to studying the
mechanisms linking family violence to infant outcomes during the sensitive period of perinatal development will
address three aims. Aim 1 is to examine how characteristics of prenatal IPV (timing, type, frequency, severity,
predictability) relate to maternal perceived and physiologic stress. Aim 2 is to examine the direct and indirect
associations among prenatal IPV, maternal stress, child maltreatment risk, mother-infant biobehavioral
coregulation, and infant health and development. Aim 3 is to examine how mother and infant resilience factors
moderate the impacts of prenatal IPV, maternal stress, child maltreatment risk, and mother-infant biobehavioral
coregulation on infant health and development. Our unifying hypothesis is that characteristics of prenatal IPV
and maternal stress will carry over into the postnatal period to negatively affect mother-infant relations and
regulation but will be differentially associated with infant health and development based on maternal and infant
resilience factors. This multi-method study will provide critical insight into sensitive periods whereby family
violence that occurs prenatally has a lasting impact on infant outcomes. Identifying modifiable mechanisms of
risk and resilience will also greatly inform strategies for prevention and intervention to lessen the
intergenerational transmission of stress dysregulation, thus improving the lives of vulnerable mothers and infants.
