ArticleChild and adolescent psychiatry and mental health2023
Prenatal stress and child externalizing behavior: effects of maternal perceived stress and cortisol are moderated by child sex.
Article in Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Stress is not so bad-cortisol level and psychological functioning after 8-week HIIT program during pregnancy: a randomized controlled trial.Frontiers in public health · 2023Trial
- Low Pregnancy Cortisol and Infant Socioemotional Problems: The Mediating Role of Postpartum Depressive Symptoms.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Perceived Stress During Pregnancy and Offspring Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Findings From the ECHO Cohort Study.JAACAP open · 2026Article
- Sex Specific Threshold Effects of Prenatal Stress on Striatal Microglia and Relevant Behaviors in Mice.Archives of medical research · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundExternalizing behavior problems are related to social maladjustment. Evidence indicates associations between prenatal stress and child behavioral outcomes. It remains unclear how psychological distress vs. biological correlates of stress (cortisol) differentially predict externalizing behavior, and how their effects might differ as a function of child sex.
method108 pregnant women from the community collected salivary cortisol and reported their perceived stress during each trimester of pregnancy. At child age 9 years (M = 9.01, SD = 0.55), 70 mothers and children reported on child behavior. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze how cortisol levels and perceived stress during pregnancy predicted current child externalizing behavior, considering the moderating effect of child sex.
resultsPerceived stress predicted higher externalizing behavior in boys (β = 0.42, p = 0.009) and lower externalizing behavior in girls (β = - 0.56, p = 0.014). Cortisol predicted lower externalizing behavior in boys (β = - 0.81, p < .001) and was not related to girls' externalizing behavior (β = 0.37, p = 0.200). DISCUSSION/
conclusionPrenatal stress affected externalizing behavior differently in girls vs. boys. These response patters in turn differed for indicators of psychological vs. biological maternal stress, encouraging an integrated approach. Findings indicate that perceived stress and cortisol may affect child development via different trajectories.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.