Abstract
Objective:To investigate whether maternal violence exposure personally and through her child is associated with an earlier age of menopause, controlling for covariates.Methods:Analyses used merged data from two related sources. Although mothers (n = 1,466) were interviewed in 1995 and then 20 years later (2015-17), their children were interviewed in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health repeatedly (Waves 1-4, 1994/5 to 2008-2009). Mothers reported their own age of menopause, and mothers and adolescents each reported their own exposure to violence as children and adults.Results:A mother's own childhood physical abuse (b = -1.60, P < .05) and her child's sexual abuse (b = -1.39, P < .01) both were associated with an earlier age of menopause. Mothers who were physically abused in childhood and have a child who experienced regular sexual abuse reached menopause 8.78 years earlier than mothers without a history of personal abuse or abuse of their child.Conclusions:Our study is the first to find that age of natural menopause is associated with intergenerational violence exposures.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 284-292 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Menopause |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 14 2022 |
Funding
Add Health is directed by Robert A. Hummer and funded by the National Institute on Aging cooperative agreements U01 AG071448 (Hummer) and U01 AG071450 (Aiello and Hummer) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Waves I-V data are from the Add Health Program Project, grant P01 HD31921 (Harris) from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Add Health was designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website ( http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth ). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. The Add Health Parent Study (AHPS) (2015-2017) data collection was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (RO1AG042794) to Duke University, V. Joseph Hotz (PI) and the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kathleen Mullan Harris (PI). Funding/support: The first author acknowledges funding for analyses through a Chancellor EDGES Fellowship and Office of Vice President of Research through PESCA funding at Texas A&M University. The first and second author acknowledges funding through NSF grant support #SES-2043192.
Keywords
- Child's physical and sexual abuse
- Intergenerational influences
- Menopausal timing
- Personal physical abuse
- Reproductive aging
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine
