A growing body of research suggests that maternal exposure to discrimination helps to explain racial disparities in children’s health. However, no study has considered if the intergenerational health effects of unfair treatment operate in the opposite direction—from child to mother. To this end, we use data from mother–child pairs in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to determine whether adolescent and young adult children’s experiences of discrimination influence their mother’s health across midlife. We find that children who report more frequent instances of discrimination have mothers whose self-rated health declines more rapidly between ages 40 and 50 years. Furthermore, racial disparities in exposure to discrimination among children explains almost 10% of the black–white gap but little of the Hispanic–white gap in self-rated health among these mothers. We conclude that the negative health impacts of discrimination are likely to operate in a bidirectional fashion across key family relationships.

中文翻译：

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代际歧视的传播：中年儿童的不平等待遇及其母亲的健康

越来越多的研究表明，孕产妇遭受歧视有助于解释儿童健康方面的种族差异。但是，没有研究考虑不公平对待的代际健康影响是否朝相反的方向-从儿童到母亲。为此，我们使用1979年全国青年纵向调查中来自母子对的数据来确定青少年的歧视经历是否会影响中年母亲的健康。我们发现，报告歧视事件频发的孩子中，母亲的自评健康状况在40到50岁之间下降得更快。此外，儿童受到歧视的种族差异解释了这些母亲在自我评估健康方面几乎有10％的黑白差距，但几乎没有西班牙裔与白人的差距。我们得出的结论是，歧视的负面健康影响可能在关键的家庭关系中以双向的方式起作用。