Maternal Stress During Pregnancy and Adolescent Depression: Spotlight on Sex Differences

Abstract

Maternal stress during pregnancy has been repeatedly associated with lasting changes in offspring physiology and behavior. Despite evidence linking maternal stress during pregnancy to premorbid abnormalities associated with depression, such as difficult temperament, cognitive deficits, and, in animal studies, brain abnormalities and biological profiles linked to depression, very few studies have examined maternal stress during pregnancy in relation to offspring depression itself and no study has examined sex differences in this association. The current study used data from 1,711 mother-offspring dyads enrolled in a longitudinal birth cohort study. Maternal narratives collected during pregnancy provided a direct, prospective measure of maternal stress during pregnancy and were qualitatively coded for stressful life events and stress-related themes by two independent raters. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify distinct subgroups of offspring based on exposure to maternal psychosocial stress during pregnancy and other known developmental factors from the prenatal, childhood, and adolescent periods that have been previously associated with depression and/or maternal stress during pregnancy. To examine sex differences, LCA was conducted separately for males and females. Subgroups derived from the LCA were compared to determine whether and to what extent they differed on adolescent depressive symptoms. LCA revealed a subgroup of “high risk” females, characterized by higher maternal ambivalence/negativity about the pregnancy, lower levels of maternal positivity about the pregnancy, higher levels of reported routine daily hassles during pregnancy, lower levels of maternal education, higher maternal age, higher maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), higher levels of maternal worry about finances and health concerns during childhood, higher levels of inhibition and conduct symptoms during childhood, decreased cognitive functioning during childhood and adolescence, lower levels of perceived paternal and maternal support during adolescence, and higher levels of maternal depression during adolescence. These high risk females exhibited elevated depressive symptoms during adolescence relative to both the “low risk” female group and the mean of the sample. A subgroup of males defined by similar indicators was not found to have elevated depressive symptoms during adolescence. Our findings appear to be in line with an emerging body of evidence suggesting that prenatal stress may have a lasting and sex-specific influence on offspring development.