Forty years ago, the public was furious. A wave of teenage girls, especially black teenage girls, appeared to be pregnant. “This is a new idea, it’s a person from this new, deviant class of people, drawn in these terms that were not actually accurate: a baby with a baby,” said Arline Geronimus.
Geronimus was a graduate student at the time. The general wisdom was that the high rate of infant mortality in the black community was because women were giving birth to children when they were too young. “I worked at school for my pregnant teenager, and what I had never heard of, and what I was seeing was not common sense,” she said.
Geronimus looked at the numbers and found that in fact his younger mother had a more successful pregnancy. She said, “For black women, the lowest risk ages were teens and late teens. And they went straight up, and there was quite a lot, up to their 20s and certainly by their mid 20s. If you gave birth to a baby, compared to when you were 18 or 19, the risk of infant death. And by the age of 35, things were off the charts.”
How did people react to what she found? “Not very good!” Jeronimus said. “People thought I was promoting teenage births. The paper wrote a column calling it “The queen of research tells them they have a baby.” I was threatened with death. ”
Jeronimus became a professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Michigan and continues to teach today. She lowered her profile, but broadened her perspective by examining indicators such as a decline in average life expectancy for Black Americans compared to White Americans (77.5) (72.8 years).
She developed the theory: The stress caused by racism and other social pressures contributes to declining health. She named it “Weathering.”
“The idea of weathering was to hint at how the rocks could survive, for example, centuries of rain and wind,” she said. “It will affect it (and) absolutely wear it, especially I like the word weathering.
Weathering theory deals with quality of life, not just lifetime. For example, black women live longer than white men (76.5 years vs. 75.1), while geronimus faces a shorter active life expectancy (59 years) than white men (64). I discovered there was.
After working on theory for decades, she put it all together in a book called Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Normal Life in an Unjust Society (Little, Brown Spark). She defines weathering as the way structural racism makes life so difficult. However, there are a variety of factors. “This doesn’t just affect people of color. Is it a matter of class?” I asked.
Little, brown spark
Geronimus stated, “It could be a class issue, and it could be a denunciation group issue. Anyone can weather human beings, oppressed, alienated, and endless. If you are suffering from stressors of the stressor, it will weather to some extent. It is environmental or material difficulties or hunger, whether it is the fact that you are not affirmed or evaluated, and where you belong, It’s a situation where you have to doubt what you say, no matter what you do or what you do.”
Kimberlyodon’s Wisdom Dr. Wisdom spends much of her career practicing Jeronimus’ theory, seeking to overcome the effects of weathering.
Wisdom is Senior Vice President of Community Health and Equity at Henry Ford Health in Detroit. She also served as Michigan’s first surgeon general.
She focuses on how daily stress can actually change the body to cellular levels, leading to premature aging. “My body keeps the score,” she said. “So take diabetes, take hypertension, take cardiovascular disease, take infant mortality, maternal mortality. Just multiply two or three results, it’s color It is something that can be seen in groups of people. It is a cold, but populations of colour actually develop pneumonia.”
For example, the latest study shows infant mortality rates among Black Americans more than twice as many as white Americans (10.9 vs. 4.52).
To challenge, Dr. Widdion founded Win Network, short for Neighborhood Network, inspired by women. Pregnant mothers are given health care, guidance and support for pregnancy and subsequent pregnancy, reducing mother and infant deaths and increasing birth weight.
Courtney Anderson said the experience of acquiring her third child, Kalani, was fantastic. “She’s a happy baby. The happiest baby I’ve got,” Anderson said.
Anderson had her first child, Camline, before joining the Victory Network. He followed his brother Christian a year later. “My first child… I was full of my hands and stressed. I was kind of angry. Postpartum depression.” But she said the support she received through victory was a huge improvement. , said it had a positive impact on her children. “It’s going to really impact them so that they know that mom is happy,” Anderson said. “When moms are happy, they get it and have more.”
I asked for wisdom. health’? “
“Yes, people should eat healthy and behave healthy, but even so, when you look at the lens of what’s actually happening in society, you see weathering,” replied Wisdom. “You can do all of them and get poor results. Typical stories are when you eat healthy, you go to school, get a university degree, you can Having a good life and living at 80 or 90. One population.
When asked whether the concept of “weathering” is seen as another way of victimizing black people or as another way of constructing them into another stereotype, Geronimus said, “It’s far from the truth I couldn’t do it. No one was working hard.
After all, it made me think about my own family. My parents passed away in the 70s. Two brothers passed away in their early 60s. I had certain illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and hypertension. And wisdom says it should not be attached to the territory – or say that the reason it attached to the territory is due to weathering.
Wisdom is, “Many people of color, “Oh, we all get diabetes. We all get cancer. So it’s part of a natural life. That’s the life course.” It’s not a life course. ”
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A story created by Alan Golds. Editor: Ed Gibnish.
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