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Parental Status and Biological Functioning: Findings from the Nashville Stress and Health Study

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A Correction to this article was published on 10 August 2020

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Abstract

Does childrearing affect the biological functioning of parents? To address this question, we analyze cross-sectional survey and biomarker data from Vanderbilt University’s Nashville Stress and Health Study, a probability sample of non-Hispanic White and Black working-age adults from Davidson County, Tennessee (2011–2014; n = 1252). Multivariable regression analyses reveal a linear dose–response relationship between the number of children living in a respondent’s home and (a) increased allostatic load, and (b) decreased leukocyte telomere length. We found no differences in biological functioning between childless respondents and empty-nest parents. These findings also withstood controls for a battery of socioeconomic factors. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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Change history

  • 10 August 2020

    Unfortunately, due to an error upon submission of this article, the article was published with an incomplete author group. Dr. Katherine L. Friedman was not listed as third author of this paper. With this correction Dr. Katherine L. Friedman has been added to the author group.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Grant R01AG034067 from the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research and the National Institute on Aging. No direct support was received from Grant R01 AG034067 for this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA

    Reed T. DeAngelis

  2. Department of Sociology, Florida State University, 526 Bellamy Building, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-2270, USA

    John Taylor

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  1. Reed T. DeAngelis
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  2. John Taylor
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Correspondence to John Taylor.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

See Table 4.

Table 4 Weighted descriptive statistics of allostatic load biomarkers
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DeAngelis, R.T., Taylor, J. Parental Status and Biological Functioning: Findings from the Nashville Stress and Health Study. Popul Res Policy Rev 39, 365–373 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09534-1

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