Persistent Peril: Why African American babies have the highes...

It’s known, for example, that a child is more likely to be born low birth weight if her mother was also born that way. If the cause is not a shared gene, perhaps it’s a shared experience. For instance, the immune system begins to develop in utero and matures over time. During certain critical periods of development, Dr. Lu points out, the immune system can be adversely affected by certain experiences and exposures, such as repeated infections or undue stress. These exposures may pattern the immune system in a particular way that sets the stage for increased risk to poor health and poor birth outcomes. A mother with less than optimal immune response may give birth to a baby with less than optimal immune response and so on.

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Chronic emotional stress results from many factors, including physically demanding jobs and a lack of control in the workplace, single parenthood, and financial worries–all problems experienced disproportionately by women of color. Discrimination is also a documented source of harmful stress. One study found that women who gave birth to very low birth weight babies were more likely to have experienced racial discrimination than women who had normal weight babies.

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Another key area is culture. Research by Dr. Collins and others has shown that while some foreign-born women (specifically African and Mexican women) have babies with better birth weights, the birth outcomes of their daughters show a decline. The same is true of Native American women who leave reservations. While women of color in the U.S. may gain from certain aspects of living in mainstream American society, they may also miss out on some of the protective effects of culture and close familial and community ties that serve as a buffer to stress and racial discrimination.

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