Pamela J. Surkan ^1*, Ichiro Kawachi ¹, Louise M. Ryan ¹, Lisa F. Berkman ¹, Lina M. Carvalho Vieira ², Karen E. Peterson ¹

¹ Harvard School of Public Health
² Universidade Federal do Piaui

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: psurkan{at}hsph.harvard.edu.

	Abstract

Objectives. We assessed whether maternal depressive symptoms and parenting self-efficacy were associated with child growth delay.

Methods. We collected data from a random sample of 595 low-income mothers and their children aged 6 to 24 months in Teresina, Piauí, Brazil, including information on sociodemographic characteristics, mothers’ depressive symptoms and parenting self-efficacy, and children’s anthropometric characteristics. We used adjusted logistic regression models in our analyses.

Results. Depressive symptoms among mothers were associated with 1.8 times higher odds (95% confidence interval [CI]=1.1, 2.9) of short stature among children. Parenting self-efficacy was not associated with short stature, nor did it mediate or modify the relationship between depressive symptoms and short stature. Maternal depressive symptoms and self-efficacy were not related to child underweight.

Conclusions. Our results showed that among low-income Brazilian families maternal depressive symptoms, but not self-efficacy, were associated with short stature in children aged 6 to 24 months after adjustment for known predictors of growth.

Key Words: Child and Adolescent Health, Global Health, Obesity, Overweight, Underweight