To provide further insight into stress generation patterns in boys and girls around puberty, this study investigated longitudinal reciprocal relations between depressive symptoms, dysfunctional attitudes, and stress generation, the process by which individuals contribute to the occurrence of stress in interpersonal contexts (e.g., problematic social interactions) or in noninterpersonal contexts (e.g., achievement problems). A community sample of N = 924 German children and early adolescents (51.8% male) completed depressive symptoms and dysfunctional attitudes measures at T1 and again 20 months later (T2). Stressful life events were reported at T2. Dysfunctional attitudes were unrelated to stress generation. Interpersonal, but not noninterpersonal, dependent stress partially mediated the relationship between initial and later depressive symptoms, with girls being more likely to generate interpersonal stress in response to depressive symptoms. Findings underscore the role of interpersonal stress generation in the early development of depressive symptomatology, and in the gender difference in depression prevalence emerging around puberty.

To enhance understanding of impaired socio-emotional development in children of postpartum depressed or anxious mothers, this longitudinal study addressed the question of whether maternal postpartum depression and anxiety disorders result in deficits in children's processing of facial emotional expressions (FEEs) at pre-school age. Thirty-two mothers who had fulfilled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) criteria for postpartum depression and/or anxiety disorder and their pre-school aged children were tested for FEE processing abilities and compared to a healthy control group (n = 29). Child assessments included separate tasks for emotion recognition and emotion labelling. Mothers completed an emotion recognition test as well as the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders I (SCID-I). Children of postpartum depressed and/or anxious mothers performed significantly worse than control children at labelling, but not at recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions. Emotion labelling at pre-school age was predicted by child age and maternal postpartum mental health, but neither current maternal mental health nor current maternal emotion recognition was associated with child FEE processing. Results point to a specific importance of early social experiences for the development of FEE labelling skills. However, further studies involving sensitive measures of emotion recognition are needed to determine if there might also exist subtle effects on FEE recognition.

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