Exploring the associations between number of children, multi-partner fertility and risk of obesity at midlife: Findings from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)

Background: Early parenthood, high parity, and partnership separation are associated with obesity. However, the emergence of non-marital partnerships, serial partnering and childbearing across unions, means that it is important to consider their association to obesity. This paper examined the associations between number of biological children and multi-partner fertility (MPF) - defined as having biological children with more than one partner, with obesity at midlife.

Method: The sample consisted of 2940 fathers and 3369 mothers in the 1970 British Cohort Study. The outcome was obesity (BMI 30 or over) at age 46. Fertility and partnership histories ascertained the number of live biological children and MPF status by age 42. The associations were tested using logistic regression adjusting for confounders at birth, age 10 and age 16. Adult factors recorded at age 42 including age at first birth, smoking status, alcohol dependency, educational attainment and housing tenure were considered as mediators.
Results
For fathers, obesity odds did not differ according to number of children or MPF. In unadjusted models, mothers with one child (OR 1.24 95%CI 1.01-1.51), mothers who had two children with two partners (OR 1.45 95%CI 1.05-1.99), and mothers who had three or more children with two or more partners (OR 1.51 95%CI 1.18-1.93) had higher odds of obesity. In adjusted models, there remained an association between mothers with one child and odds of obesity (OR 1.30 95%CI 1.05-1.60). All other associations were attenuated when confounders were included.

Conclusions: Mothers who had children with multiple partners had higher odds of obesity. However this association was completely attenuated when parental and child confounders were accounted for; suggesting that this association may be explained by confounding. Mothers who had one child only may be at increased odds of obesity, however this could be due to multiple factors including age at first birth.

10.1371/journal.pone.0282795

1932-6203

Stannard, Sebastian

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Berrington, Ann

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Alwan, Nisreen A.

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13 April 2023

Stannard, Sebastian

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Berrington, Ann

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Alwan, Nisreen A.

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Stannard, Sebastian, Berrington, Ann and Alwan, Nisreen A. (2023) Exploring the associations between number of children, multi-partner fertility and risk of obesity at midlife: Findings from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). PLoS ONE, 18 (4 April), [e0282795]. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282795).

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Accepted/In Press date: 22 February 2023

Published date: 13 April 2023

Additional Information: Funding Information: This work was partly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) [ES/ P000673/1]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Stannard et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.