The Roles of Parents in Shaping Fathering Across Generations in Cebu, Philippines

Objective: This study examined how parental caregiving and parent–child closeness are associated with future fathering among 335 Filipino men who are participants in a long-running birth cohort study. Background Few studies have multidecade longitudinal data to test the pathways through which parenting is transmitted across generations, with most relevant research conducted in the United States, Europe, and other similar settings. The roles of mothers and fathers in shaping their sons’ future parenting is particularly understudied despite fathers having the potential to positively influence child health and development. Method: Participants’ mothers (Generation 1 [G1]) reported on caregiving during Generation 2 (G2) participants’ early life, and the G2 males reported parent–child closeness during adolescence. G2 fathers reported on their own child-care involvement and the salience of care- giving to their parenting identity. We tested whether parent–child closeness moderated the effect of early-life care to predict later-life fathering. Results: G1-G2 closeness moderated the association between G1 parents’ caregiving and G2 fathers’ parenting identity (for both G1 parents) and caregiving time (for G1 fathers only). When the G1-G2 mother–son relationship was not close, there was a negative correlation between G1 maternal care and G2 fathers’ caregiving identity. For G2 men who were close to their fathers, there were positive associations between G1 paternal care and G2 fathers’ caregiving identity and time, respectively. Among G2 men who were not close to their fathers, the slopes relating G1 paternal care to G2 fathers’ care- giving identity and time, respectively, were negative. Conclusion: These findings reflect that developmental experiences with both mothers and fathers are predictive of men’s identity as parents in adulthood and that closeness between fathers and sons moderates whether sons’ paternal care tends to emulate or diverge from their fathers’ caregiving patterns

Measuring natural disasters through self-report: the case of a national child cohort study

Children are considered to be disproportionately affected by natural disasters related to climate change. The impacts on the development of children of being exposed to multiple natural disasters are not well understood. This paper reports on the development and validation of a cumulative measure of exposure to natural disasters (2013-17) at the area level, as well as an individual-level measure of the impact of these natural disasters using data from the Longitudinal Cohort Study on the Filipino Child and linked data from the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT). First, we show that a caregiver-reported measure of cumulative exposure to natural disasters had statistically significant associations with disasters reported by officials responsible for the geographic area and with disasters in EM-DAT. A substantial proportion of the variation in individual reports of exposure to natural disasters occurred at the area level (25%), supporting the idea that taking community averages reflects a consensus of the exposure to natural disasters. We then generated a community average measure of exposure to natural disasters, based on neighbours' reports but not individual self-reports - therefore providing an exogenous measure of disaster exposure in the local area for each household. Second, we show that this community measure was more strongly related to EM-DAT and barangay (small administrative unit) official reports than individual household reports. Third, many household factors (e.g. quality of housing) will mitigate the impact of a natural disaster. Even though exposure to a natural disaster may be a shared experience, we develop an individual-level measure of disaster impacts. Importantly, this measure of disaster impact was associated with measures of exposure (individual and community average), community ratings by officials and EM-DAT. However, the impact measure was only moderately associated with the community average exposure. Both the community average and disaster impacts measures were consistently related to household income and the adequacy of income in households. We discuss the implications of our study for more nuanced measures of disaster exposure and monitoring

Adiposity and Chronic Inflammation in Young Women Predict Inflammation during Normal Pregnancy in the Philippines

Background: Rates of overweight and obesity are on the rise globally, and excess adipose tissue may contribute to elevations in inflammation during pregnancy, leading to pregnancy complications and adverse birth outcomes

Grandmothers, Fathers, and Depressive Symptoms Are Associated with Food Insecurity among Low-Income First-Time African-American Mothers in North Carolina

African Americans experience household food insecurity—the limited availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways—at three times the rate of non-Hispanic whites. Thirty percent of all African American children live in food insecurity households. The purpose of this study was to identify characteristics associated with household food insecurity among a high risk postpartum population. 206 low-income, African-American mother-infant dyads were recruited through WIC clinics. The six-item USDA food security scale was used to classify households as food secure, marginally food secure or food insecure. Multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate the association between selected maternal/household characteristics and household food security status. Fifty-three percent of households were food secure, 34% were marginally food secure and 13% were food insecure. Maternal education less than college (Relative Risk Ratio = 0.46, 95% Confidence Interval: 0.22, 0.98) was inversely associated with marginal food security. Depressive symptoms (RRR = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.16) and having the baby’s father in the household (RRR = 3.46, 95% CI: 1.22, 9.82) were associated with household food insecurity, while having a grandmother in the household (RRR = 0.15, 95% CI: 0.03, 0.80) was inversely associated with experiencing household food insecurity. Findings from this study suggest that young low-income African American families with only one child are particularly susceptible to experiencing household food insecurity. Intergenerational support and transfer of knowledge may be a key protective attribute among low-income African American households

Family Background, Service Providers, and Early Childhood Development in the Philippines: Proxies and Interactions

We examine the importance of family background for early childhood development (ECD) using data collected in 2001 from 3,556 children ages 0–36 months in three regions of the Philippines. We focus on four main research questions: (1) Are associations of family background with ECD in part proxying for health and ECD‐related programs? (2) Are associations of family background with ECD biased due to omission of unobserved community characteristics that may be related to placement of health and ECD‐related services? (3) Are there important interactions between family background and health and ECD‐related programs in their effect on ECD? (4) Are there important interactions among the components of family background? Physical assets and human assets have a number of important positive associations with ECD. These include the positive relations between physical assets and the anthropometrics and hemoglobin levels of children, as well as lower occurrence of worms. Each parent’s schooling and height also have notable positive effects on these outcomes and the motor and language skills of children. The failure to account for community characteristics is related to often substantial bias in the estimated effect of family background on ECD. We do not find strong evidence that interactions are important

Infant Overweight Is Associated with Delayed Motor Development

To examine how infant overweight and high subcutaneous fat relate to infant motor development

Microbial exposures in infancy predict levels of the immunoregulatory cytokine interleukin-4 in filipino young adults

Infancy represents a window of development during which long-term immunological functioning can be influenced. In this study, we evaluate proxies of microbial exposures in infancy as predictors of interleukin-4 (IL-4) in young adulthood. Interleukin-4 (IL-4) is an immunoregulatory cytokine that plays a role in the pathogenesis of atopic and allergic disease