# Motherhood Biographies and Midlife Women's Health

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM · 2023 · $223,290

## Abstract

Abstract
Research shows widening health disparities among midlife women since the mid-1980s. However, the
mechanisms through which these health gradients operate are not fully known. Although about 85 percent of
midlife (ages 40-50) women today are mothers, the pathways to and contexts of motherhood—what we call
motherhood biographies—have become increasingly diverse across many dimensions relevant to health,
including age at first birth, parity, spacing of children, and relationship status. Despite evidence that each of these
individual dimensions of the motherhood biography shape maternal health early in the life course, their longer-
term consequences for maternal health at midlife have been largely ignored. Additionally, research to date has
failed to examine whether midlife mother-child relationship characteristics (e.g., coresidence, relationship quality)
either explain or condition the impact of motherhood biographies on midlife women's health. What is unknown
in the scientific literature is how motherhood biographies and midlife motherhood contexts are related to health
and health disparities among midlife women and how these effects vary by education and race-ethnicity. The
proposed R01 study, Motherhood Biographies and Midlife Women's Health, will be the first to
comprehensively determine how motherhood biographies and midlife motherhood contexts matter for
midlife women's health by education and race-ethnicity. We use nationally-representative data from the
1979-2016 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79; N=4,271 women). The data are
unmatched in their ability to address our research aims as they include nationally representative longitudinal
data—the gold standard in research on family and health—and allow us to follow women from adolescence
to their 50s, tracking key moments in motherhood and health. We examine a comprehensive collection of
health variables in order to capture the critical heath disparities found at midlife including related to a) health
behaviors, b) physical health, and c) mental and cognitive health. This project is innovative in that it
presents new solutions to the perplexing puzzle of the midlife health gradient by theorizing and examining
motherhood biographies and contexts as key pathways though which health outcomes are stratified at midlife.
This proposal will have a significant impact in demonstrating risk factors and mechanisms for midlife health
disparities. Additionally, given that education and race-ethnicity are also associated with health disparities and
motherhood, this study is significant in testing how diversifying motherhood biographies by education and race-
ethnicity play a role in the widening of midlife health disparities. Examining motherhood biographies at this life
course juncture helps us to better understand health disparities as this generation ages into later-life. Because
health disparities widen with age, it is both possible and imperative to identify the social ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10538583
- **Project number:** 5R01AG069251-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM
- **Principal Investigator:** Rin Reczek
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $223,290
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-01-01 → 2025-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10538583

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10538583, Motherhood Biographies and Midlife Women's Health (5R01AG069251-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10538583. Licensed CC0.

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