Constructing Parenthood as a Chronic and Accumulative Stressor that Shapes the Body Mass Trajectories of Parents?

• In Event: Implications of Critical Events/Periods Across the Life Course

Abstract

This study examines how parenthood, conceptualized as a chronic and accumulative stressor, shapes body mass trajectories among midlife parents in the United States. While prior research has documented associations between parenthood and weight gain, existing work predominantly treats parenthood through static markers — such as parity, age at first birth, or residential transitions — rather than as an ongoing, time-varying process of parenting involvement. This project addresses that gap by drawing on stress theory and the gender system theory to argue that the persistent financial, physical, emotional, and cognitive demands of parenting accumulate across the life course and are unequally distributed by gender and socioeconomic status. Particularly, I argue that the body mass trajectory should be analyzed using duration of parenthood as the time axis, rather than the chronological age of parents.
I pursue three interrelated research questions. First, how do mothers' and fathers' body mass trajectories differ across the duration of parenthood, accounting for age at first birth, socioeconomic status, and health behaviors? Second, how do different dimensions of parenting involvement, as time-varying stressors, relate to body mass trajectories, and do these relationships differ by gender and parenthood timing? Third, to what extent does perceived stress mediate the relationship between parenting involvement and midlife weight gain, and does this mediation vary by gender?
To address these questions, I develop hypotheses specifying gendered pathways linking parenting work, stress, and body mass. I outline an analytical strategy using the 2014, 2019, and 2021 waves of the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), leveraging its panel structure to model within-person change. This project advances sociological understanding of health inequality by demonstrating how socially organized caregiving responsibilities — rather than biological or demographic attributes of fertility alone — are translated into differential health outcomes over the life course.

Author

• Xiaoyi Cui, The Ohio State University