Stress and Weathering from Childhood to Old Age: Life-course Sociology Models of Stress and Telomeres

• In Event: 1246 - The Long Arm of Childhood: Early life exposures and later life consequences

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Previous research has explored the relationship between childhood and adulthood stressful life events (SLEs) and adult salivary telomere length (TL), but no research to date has tested different sociological life-course models in which adulthood stress may fully, partly, or not mediate the relationship between childhood stress and adult TL. METHODS: To fill this gap, we elaborate over previous work by Puterman et al. (2016) and other standard models that do not account for the temporal order of stressors in childhood and adulthood, by using structural equation modeling (SEM) for a sample of 5,754 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) participants to compare the fit of three nested life-course models—social trajectory, early critical period, and cumulative risk. RESULTS: Results indicated that the social trajectory model, in which the association between childhood SLEs and TL in later adulthood is fully mediated by adulthood SLEs, fit the data better than the early critical period (no mediation) and cumulative risk (partial mediation) models. CONCLUSION: In the social trajectory model, childhood SLEs are related to TL in later life only through adulthood SLEs. If these findings can be replicated in other cohorts, the social trajectory model suggests that effective interventions and social policies at any point—childhood or adulthood—have the potential to improve weathering outcomes in old age. We conclude that the direct association of childhood SLEs and TL can be overestimated when life-course pathways linking SLEs and TL are overlooked.

Authors

• Margaret Willis, Columbia University

• Ursula Staudinger, Columbia University

• Pam Factor-Litvak, Columbia University

• Esteban Calvo, UM & Columbia University