Maternal Depressive Symptoms in Childhood and Openness to Experience in Adulthood

Abstract

We examined the role of maternal depressive symptoms reported during childhood as a predictor of an important personality trait, Openness to Experience (O), in middle adulthood. Participants were 95 adults (38 previously malnourished, 57 control, mean age 42.1 years) who had been followed longitudinally since childhood by the Barbados Nutrition Study. Maternal depressive symptoms had been measured when the participants were 5–11 years of age by the General Adjustment and Morale Scale; O was measured in adulthood by the Revised NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Multiple regression analyses, adjusted for childhood household standard of living, showed a significant main effect on O of maternal depressive symptoms (p < 0.01). Maternal depression also attenuated the significant effect of childhood malnutrition by 14%. Maternal depressive symptoms in childhood may therefore play a causal role in adult personality, in particular Openness to Experience, with implications for creativity.

Do stimulation and support in the early childhood home environment and best friendship quality in adolescence predict adult personality?

“…Perhaps stimulation and support in the home reinforced curiosity and creativity in ways that made these traits persist, in the form of openness to experience, over longer periods. In a similar long-term longitudinal study, Galler et al (2013) found associations between children’s experiences of maternal depression in childhood and their openness to experiences in adulthood, particularly intellectual curiosity. However, we did not predict this association based on previous research on parental styles (maternal over-reactivity and maternal warmth, specifically), which instead indicated that lower stimulation and support in the home would predict lower conscientiousness ( de Haan, 2013 ; Van den Akker et al, 2014 ).…”