Parenting Difficulties May Contribute to Asthma

An eight-year prospective study of 150 children indicates that parenting difficulties in the first year of a baby's life increases the risk of the baby developing asthma. The study, conducted by researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center (Denver, CO, USA), was published in the October 2001 issue of Pediatrics.

The researchers followed the children from before birth until they were six to eight years old. All were considered genetically at risk for asthma because all their mothers and some of their fathers had asthma. The children in the study whose parents coped poorly with the demands of parenting were more than twice as likely to develop asthma by the time they were six to eight than children whose parents had no difficulty in coping. The researchers assessed parenting difficulties in interviews with the mothers three weeks after the birth of their babies. The interview evaluated a variety of factors including a mother's emotional state, the support she received from family and friends, and the parents' care-giving knowledge and sensitivity to the needs of their babies.

Forty of the children, or 28% of the group, developed asthma by the time they were six to eight. Two main risk factors were associated with asthma at age six to eight: serum IgE levels and parenting difficulties. An elevated IgE level at six months increased the odds of developing asthma by 2.15 times, while parenting difficulties documented at three weeks increased the odds by 2.07 times.

"Many of the children in our study with well-adjusted, caring, effective parents still developed asthma,” said Mary Klinnert, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a pediatric psychologist at National Jewish Medical and Research Center. "But our results do indicate that the psychological environment of the child may play a role in the development of asthma.”



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