Parent-child relationship quality buffers the association between mothers' adverse childhood experiences and physiological synchrony.

Background: Family environment plays a critical role in shaping stress response systems. Concordance between mothers' and children's physiological states, specifically their Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), reflects dyadic co-regulation. Negative or weakened RSA synchrony during interactions is linked to various psychosocial risks, but existing research has focused on risks in the mother or child as opposed to the dyad.

Linking preschoolers' parasympathetic activity to maternal early adversity and child behavior: An intergenerational perspective.

Increasing evidence suggests intergenerational effects of maternal early adversity on offspring self-regulation. Prior work has demonstrated associations between maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and infant respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a parasympathetic biomarker associated with emotional and behavioral self-regulation. The present study examined these associations and additional potential pathways including children's violence exposure and maternal psychopathology among 123 biological mother-child dyads.

Family social support buffers the intergenerational association of maternal adverse childhood experiences and preschoolers' externalizing behavior.

Despite previous work demonstrating that an accumulation of maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is associated with negative health outcomes across generations, few studies have investigated protective factors beyond the parent-child dyad in the intergenerational transmission of adversity. The current study extends previous findings by examining maternal family social support as a culturally relevant buffer in the association between mothers' ACEs and her children's behavior problems in early childhood. Participants included 121 African American mothers and their preschool-aged children experiencing high sociodemographic risk.

Setting the trajectory: racial disparities in newborn telomere length.

Objective: To explore racial differences in newborn telomere length (TL) and the effect moderation of the sex of the infant while establishing the methodology for the use of newborn blood spots for TL analyses.

Study Design: Pregnant mothers were recruited from the Greater New Orleans area. TL was determined via monochrome multiplex quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction on DNA extracted from infant blood spots.