Mothers' depressive symptoms and infant negative emotionality in the prediction of child adjustment at age 3: Testing the maternal reactivity and child vulnerability hypotheses

Abstract

This study examined individual differences in how mothers' depressive symptoms affect children's early adjustment. It tested whether problematic development among children high in negative emotionality is accentuated by (a) maternal reactivity, the negative reactivity of mothers with depressive symptoms to difficult child characteristics; and (b) child vulnerability, the susceptibility of negatively emotional children to the negative parenting of mothers with depressive symptoms. Based on 1,364 participants from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, results showed that mothers' depressive symptoms predicted greater risk for adjustment problems at age 3 among children who as infants were high rather than low in negative emotionality. Increased risk was evident for behavior problems, low responsiveness, high separation distress, and low social competence. Mediational tests suggested that increased risk reflected maternal reactivity: the stronger mothers' depressive symptoms, the more they responded with negative parenting to children high in negative emotionality. The proposal that child vulnerability mediates the greater impact of mothers' depressive symptoms on negatively emotional children was verified only for separation distress. The results support the proposal that, when mothers are high in depressive symptoms, aversive characteristics of children and their behavior increasingly influence early adjustment and do so because they elicit negative parent behavior.

Maternal depression in the intergenerational transmission of childhood maltreatment and its sequelae: Testing postpartum effects in a longitudinal birth cohort

“…For example, difficult temperament—a putatively heritable characteristic—may elicit both negative parenting behavior and parental depression (Dix & Yan, 2014). To examine genetic versus environmental mediation, studies could draw upon adoptive mother-child cohorts (McAdams et al, 2015) or recruit egg donor in vitro fertilization (IVF) samples where the mother carries the pregnancy without being genetically related to the child (Thapar et al, 2009), to examine whether evidence converges across these types of studies.…”

Parenting stress and development of late preterm infants at 4 months corrected age

“…Higher parenting stress related to the child includes parental perceptions of their child as: (a) distractible (Benzies, Harrison, & Magill-Evans, 2004); (b) unable to adjust to changes in the environment (Dix & Yan, 2014); (c) displaying behaviors not positively reinforcing parenting (Slagt et al, 2012); (d) placing many demands on the parent (Kim, Mayes, Feldman, Leckman, & Swain, 2013); (e) unhappy or distressed (Rutherford, Goldberg, Luyten, Bridgett, & Mayes, 2013); and (f) not meeting expectations the parents had for their infant (Spinelli, Poehlmann, & Bolt, 2013).…”

Maternal depression and anxiety disorders (MDAD) and child development: A Manitoba population-based study

“…[3] Exposure to maternal depression and anxiety disorders (MDAD) has been shown to have a negative influence on child development in infancy,[4] early childhood,[5, 6] and at school entry,[7, 8] and is associated with poor birth outcomes,[4] elevated stress response,[4, 9, 10] negative temperament,[11] social, emotional and behavioural problems, [12, 13] impaired cognitive performance[14] and compromised physical health. [5] What is less is clear are the mechanisms through which MDAD influences child development.…”