Expansion and commentary on a two generation approach to prenatal opioid exposure - a commentary on Conradt et al. (2023)

Abstract

Early child neurodevelopment, including psychopathology, is influenced by a myriad of factors and interactions. These factors are both intrinsic to the caregiver-child dyad such as genetics and epigenetics as well as extrinsic such as social environment and enrichment. Additional layers of complexity may be at play within families with parental substance use, as outlined by Conradt et al. (2023) in their review article titled "Prenatal Opioid Exposure: A Two-Generation Approach to Conceptualizing Risk for Child Psychopathology.". Conradt et al. provide an overarching synthesis of many findings related to substance use that goes beyond the in utero exposure to the transgenerational interface of pregnancy and early childhood, including biologic sensitivities such as genetic predisposition, overrepresentation of social risk factors including early adversities of caregivers and poverty, and transgenerational interactional susceptibilities. Altered dyadic interactions may relate to joint changes in neurobehavior and are not isolated from the influence of infant genetics, epigenetics, and environment. The early neurodevelopmental correlates of prenatal substance exposure including risks of childhood psychopathology are then a composite of many different forces. This nuanced reality, described as an "inter-generational cascade," does not centralize parental substance use or prenatal exposure as a singularly causative moment but positions it within the ecologic milieu of the total lived experience.