Maternal Depression and Parenting: Implications for Children's Emergent Emotion Regulation and Behavioral Functioning

Abstract

SYNOPSISObjective. We investigated the role of mothers' elevated depressive symptoms on scaffolding and availability to assist preschool children's regulatory development. Design. A sample of 208 3-year-olds and their mothers was drawn from an ongoing longitudinal study and followed to child age 4. Maternal scaffolding behaviors and children's emotion regulation competencies were assessed using behavioral coding schemes applied to observations of structured laboratory tasks, and maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems were based on parental reports. Results. Mothers who reported depressive symptoms above an established threshold at child age 3 had children who exhibited greater dysregulation and behavior problems at age 4. Depressed mothers were less effective at providing emotional, motivational, and technical scaffolding. Mothers who scaffolded less effectively, regardless of depression status, had children who were more emotionally dysregulated with more behavior problems by age 4. Scaffolding did not mediate maternal depression and child dysregulation. Conclusions. Maternal depression constitutes a risk factor for ineffective scaffolding, and scaffolding during the preschool period is related to children's emotional and behavioral competence.

Links Between Maternal and Child Psychopathology Symptoms: Mediation Through Child Emotion Regulation and Moderation Through Maternal Behavior

“…For example, one study by Suveg et al [22] found that in comparison to mothers of children without anxiety disorders, mothers of children with anxiety disorders, who also had higher rates of psychopathology symptoms, used fewer emotion words and were more likely to discourage emotion-related discussion, and reported restricted family expressiveness. The lack of parent coaching of emotional experiences may contribute to emotion dysregulation and indeed, parental psychopathology has been identified as a risk factor for child emotion dysregulation [23].…”

A Multi-Domain Model of Risk Factors for ODD Symptoms in a Community Sample of 4-Year-Olds

“…Maternal depression may increase child psychopathology through its association with less parental warmth and increased parental hostility (Bor and Sanders 2004), as well as poorer maternal scaffolding ability, i.e., ability to provide structure in frustrating situations (Hoffman et al 2006).…”

“…Parenting There is consistent evidence that parental hostility (Heller and Baker 2000), warmth (Hipwell et al 2008) and scaffolding (Hoffman et al 2006) are associated with externalizing behaviors and ODD symptoms. Scaffolding is a parenting skill that involves providing parental support to help the child achieve a level of competence on a task, and then withdrawing the no-longer-needed support (Hoffman et al 2006).…”

Diversity in Unity: Perspectives from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

“…Indeed, many researchers have extensively studied the relationship between maternal depression and preschool children's poor functioning in emotional, behavioural, and cognitive aspects. Compared to the children of non-depressed mothers, the children of depressed mothers show poor regulation of emotion and emotional expression (Hoffman et al, 2006;Hooper et al, 2015), as well as higher rates of both externalising (e.g. hyperactivity and aggressive behaviour) and internalising problem behaviours (e.g.…”

“…However, maternal depression and children's hot EF might be related, given the fact that both contain emotional elements. Furthermore, there has been considerable research which sought to identify the impacts of maternal depression on children's emotional regulation and expression (Hoffman, et al, 2006;Hooper et al, 2015), one of the functions controlled by the hot EF.…”