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Study: Racism Against Moms Can Harm Their Babies

Researchers have found that when pregnant black and Latina women experience discrimination, their babies are more likely to have low birth weight. Which means that the ill effects of racism might start even before birth.

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Black women in America are over twice as likely as white women to give birth to babies with low birth weight, and socioeconomic and healthcare disparities don't fully explain the difference. Since low birth weight can predispose people to lung disease, cardiovascular problems, and diabetes later in life, researchers have been looking for a reason why it's linked to race. Now a study reveals one answer: discrimination against women can actually affect the weight of their babies.

For a study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Valerie Earnshaw and her colleagues at Yale interviewed over 1,000 black and Latina girls and women between the ages of 14 and 21 (some groups of Latinas, such as Puerto Rican women, are also more likely than average to have low-birth-weight babies). They asked them how frequently they experienced forms of discrimination like being treated with less respect than other people, receiving poorer service, or being called names or insulted. They also asked whether they thought they were being discriminated against because of their race, their age, or other factors, and they screened the women for depression. When the babies were born, the researchers also recorded their weight.



Many studies, including a new one on ten-year-olds have found significant health disparities between white Americans and minorities, extending throughout life. Some have attributed these disparities to income, but other research [PDF] suggests that's not the only factor. And discrimination has been shown to harm physical and mental health as well. According to Earnshaw and her coauthors, that harm may begin not just with children's first experiences of prejudice, but with what their mothers go through before they're even born.