Familism – a cultural value that emphasizes close bonds and family-before-self – has protective mental health benefits for Latina mothers during early parenting, according to a new multi-university study led by UC Irvine Chicano/Latino studies assistant professor Isabel F. Almeida. The study, published in the Journal of Latinx Psychology, is the first to link this core Latino cultural trait to postpartum health benefits for Latina mothers.

“Prior studies have linked familism to lower levels of depressive symptoms and stress in youth, college students and older adults, but no studies to date have examined these associations in the postpartum period, particularly among Latinas,” says Almeida. “Most maternal mental health research focuses on non-Hispanic white, middle class women, limiting generalizability to racially and ethnically diverse populations.”

Almeida joined forces with eight researchers across five U.S. universities – UCI, University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, Stony Brook University and UCLA – to address this gap.

They focused on three facets of familism – family obligation and sense of duty, family as a source of support, and family as a guiding influence in decision making – in relation to reported depressive symptoms and perceived stress in the first year and a half after childbirth among Latina mothers living in the U.S. Participants included 420 Latina mothers in their 20s, 116 of whom were born in the U.S. and 304 of whom were born abroad and had been living in the U.S. for about a decade on average. The mothers were part of interviews and surveys conducted from 2003-08 across five U.S. sites – Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC and rural eastern North Carolina- via the Child Community Health Network, in which they shared values and mental health experiences 12 months postpartum, with depressive symptoms and stress assessed again when children were 18 months old.

Researchers found:

• Higher overall levels of familism were associated with lower depressive symptoms and lower perceived stress for Latina mothers one-year postpartum across both groups.
• At 18 months postpartum, the specific facet of family support remained key in lowering perceived stress across both groups but no longer influenced depressive symptoms.
• U.S.-born Latinas reported lower levels of familism overall compared to the study participants born abroad, yet familism for the former was more positively associated with lower perceived stress at 18 months after birth than among the latter group.

“This study points to the importance of culturally specific protective factors in shaping maternal mental health among Latina mothers, and the need for a more nuanced, culturally responsive approach to postpartum policy, clinical practice, research and care,” says Almeida. She notes that future work focused on cultural values as an effective entry point for health could improve the way distress is recognized and addressed during early parenting.

Co-authors on this work include Precious J. Araujo, psychology graduate student, and Belinda Campos, Chicano/Latino studies professor, UC Irvine; Karina Corona, population and public health sciences postdoctoral scholar, and Gabrielle Rinne, NeuroEndocrinology of Social Ties Lab postdoctoral scholar, USC; Azucena Villalobos, Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Fellow, Penn; Christine M. Guardino, psychology assistant professor, Stony Brook University; and Christine Dunkel Schetter, psychology Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA.

This research was supported through cooperative agreements with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health (Grants U HD44207, U HD44219, U HD44226, U HD44245, U HD44253, U HD54791, U HD54019, U HD44226-05S1, U HD44245-06S1 and R03 HD59584) and the National Institute for Nursing Research (Grant U NR008929).

-Heather Ashbach, UCI Social Sciences
-photo by Luis Fonseca, UCI Social Sciences