Intergenerational Transmission and Race

I thought the data on the intergenerational transmission of low birth weight and the discussions about LBW versus race were particularly very interesting. The book stated that intergenerational transmission can be attributed to biological and possibly even genetic causes (60). There is talk about how if the mother from a previous generation was born of low birth weight, or had a sister who was born with low birth weight or the mother, there is an increased chance of her child being low birth weight. This makes me conclude that there is a genetic factor involved in low birth weight and it plays a pretty significant role. It may even tell us that there is a specific gene or something that is passed down within certain people in the family that can contribute to a baby being of low birth weight. Additionally, it is noted that social, economic, and behavioral conditions are shared so those may contribute to the low birth but cannot have such a direct effect or causation. They also found, while factoring out a lot of other factors such as mother, behavior, SES, race, etc, that families that have a father who was low birth weight have an extremely high potential of being of low birth weight as well. Which is odd, seeing as one would think the opposite with the mother. This leads to the fact that maybe there is some sort of recessive gene for low birth weight or something along those genetic lines.

One factor that cannot be ignored in this intergenerational research is the race of the child. Race was discussed in this book quite a lot even in the opening chapters. It is a very imminent problem in the research of low birth weight children and begs an answer. How much does race really have to do with the lo birth weight of a child? Race can determine a lot of other factors in the child's life as well, so this is one of the main reasons why researches think it to be so prominent. There was comparison between African American babies and non-African American babies in the first few chapters that touched on why African American babies were an interesting circumstance. There are a lot of African American families, actually more of them who are lower in socioeconomic status than non-african Americans. Even the ones who are middle and high class and very successful were stated to have on average more low birth-weight babies. This discredited the theory that the cause for the low birth weight was the socioeconomic status and the wealth and quality of the jobs that these families had. Although these factors do play a big role. If the family is not living in a great place and it is run down, they do not have steady jobs or good health care, which a lot of African American families don't, then they will not be able to raise a baby, even in the womb, with a healthy, productive lifestyle. There won't be a way for the baby to get good prenatal care and they won't be able to provide for it. However, the book did state that some black babies may just be naturally smaller than white babies are at birth, which would explain the statistic of frequent low birth weight. Black babies may be smaller at all gestational stages (45). Therefore, race does not show any causation, or even a good correlation for low birth weight because a black baby being small does not have the same negative implications for development.