Reproductive habitus, psychosocial health, and birth weight variation in Mexican immigrant and Mexican American women in south Texas

The Latina Paradox, or persistent, unexplained variation in low birth weight rates in recently immigrated Mexican women and the trend toward higher rates in subsequent generations of Mexican American women, is most often attributed to unidentified sociocultural causes. We suggest herein that different disciplinary approaches can be synthesized under the constructs of reproductive habitus and subjective social status to identify influences of sociocultural processes on birth weight. Reproductive habitus are “modes of living the reproductive body, bodily practices, and the creation of new subjects through interactions between people and structures” (Smith-Oka, 2012: 2276). Subjective social status infers comparison of self to others based on community definitions of status or socioeconomic status (Adler 2007). We present results from a prospective study of low-income Mexican immigrant and Mexican American women from south Texas that tested the ability of reproductive habitus and subjective social status to elucidate the Latina Paradox. We hypothesized that reproductive habitus between Mexican immigrant women and Mexican American women inform different subjective social statuses during pregnancy, and different subjective social statuses mediate responses to psychosocial stressors known to correlate with low birth weight. Six hundred thirty-one women were surveyed for psychosocial health, subjective social status, and reproductive histories between 2011 and 2013. Eighty-three women were interviewed between 2012 and 2013 for status during pregnancy, prenatal care practices, and pregnancy narratives and associations. Birth weight was extracted from medical records. Results were mixed. Subjective social status and pregnancy-related anxiety predicted low birth weight in Mexican immigrant but not Mexican American women. Mexican immigrant women had significantly lower subjective social status scores but a distinct reproductive habitus that could explain improved psychosocial health during pregnancy. Results underscore the importance of a biopsychosocial, mixed methods approach that integrates anthropology, psychology, and epidemiology in the effort to understand the complex dynamic between sociocultural processes and birth weight.