Study: How Relationships Affect New Moms’ Cardiometabolic Health

Psychology researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas have determined that the strength of a new mother's relationship with her intimate partner has a particularly strong influence on her cardiometabolic health relative to her relationships with family and friends.

Dr. Heidi Kane, an associate professor of psychology in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), is the corresponding author of the study, published in the May edition of the journal Health Psychology.

The American Heart Association (AHA) defines favorable cardiometabolic health as having a normal weight and blood pressure and not having diabetes. The AHA also has found that less than half of women begin their pregnancies with ideal heart health.

And while there are a number of dietary and other lifestyle changes that can improve cardiometabolic health, Kane said that their study showed that having a strong relationship with an intimate partner is also consequential.

"It's well established that social relationships are important for your health," Kane said. "Your relationship quality with your partner is important in various ways. What's new in this study is that we're not looking at these different relationships in isolation - we're trying to account for the full social environment as well as we can. That allowed us to make some interesting findings."

"What's new in this study is that we're not looking at these different relationships in isolation - we're trying to account for the full social environment as well as we can. That allowed us to make some interesting findings."

Dr. Heidi Kane, associate professor of psychology in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Data for the study was collected by the Community Child Health Network (CCHN), an initiative of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) and based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which gathered data from predominantly low-income participants in five states.

Researchers evaluated home interviews with 1,328 mothers at one, six and 12 months after childbirth to assess social relationship function, including intimate partner, family, social network and neighborhood. At six and 12 months postbirth, researchers also obtained measures of blood pressure, waist circumference, hemoglobin A1c - a marker for diabetes - and HDL cholesterol to develop a cardiometabolic risk index.

Dr. Jackie Nelson, also an associate professor of psychology at UT Dallas, identified four groups that emerged from the data in the study's person-centered analyses: all strong relationships; all weak relationships; strong partner, weak network; and weak partner, strong network.

"The group with weak partner relationships but strong network relationships had higher cardiovascular risk measures than all of the strong partner relationship groups, including those with weak social support networks," she said. "There wasn't a significant difference between the all-strong relationships group and the strong partner, weak network group. So, it seems that partner support serves as a good buffer in that first year as a mom. It's a very salient time to evaluate that partner relationship and what it means in your life."

The study authors noted that the results "can help identify women who may need intervention during and after pregnancy to reduce future cardiometabolic risk."

Kane said that adjustments were made for some known predictors of poor cardiometabolic health, such as smoking and alcohol consumption, in order to focus on how social relationships are related.

"Relationship issues with any of these groups can serve as stressors in and of themselves," she said. "Relationships can be protective against outside stressors or exacerbate them as new moms try to meet new demands in life."

Kane noted that people exist within a full spectrum of interpersonal relationships - not just with their partners, but also with relatives, in neighborhoods and through broader social networks. She hopes that the study leads to ways to identify people who may be at risk for poor health outcomes and the development of strategies that may help reduce that risk.

"We hope that examining these layers of contextual factors is a steppingstone in understanding how to examine the broader social contexts simultaneously, not just in isolation," she said. "As we learn to identify women who may be at a higher risk for cardiometabolic disease or disorders during this timeframe, with incremental research, we can also analyze their social networks to build better targeted interventions."

The remaining authors of the study are affiliated with UCLA. The CCHN has received several grants related to the research from the NICHD and the NINR, which are components of the National Institutes of Health.

Media Contact: Stephen Fontenot, UT Dallas, 972-883-4405, [email protected], or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected].