Patterns of depressive parenting: Why they occur and their role in early developmental risk.

Abstract

This study examined subgroups of depressed mothers who differ on their intrusive and withdrawn behavior. It explored the stability of these differences, why they occur, and their role in children's early developmental risk. With 6- to 24-month data from 1,364 dyads, latent class analysis identified 3 stable patterns of early parenting among mothers consistently above clinical thresholds on depressive symptoms (n = 159): 2 low-functioning patterns (high intrusive, high intrusive/high withdrawn) and 1 high-functioning pattern (low intrusive/low withdrawn). Low-functioning depressed mothers were no more depressed than high-functioning depressed mothers, but lacked personal resources and were in low-support, high-stress contexts. Differences in their children's development over the first 2 years appeared to depend primarily on demographic risk. By 36 months, however, stable differences in depressed mothers' patterns of intrusive and withdrawn parenting-independent of demographic risk-predicted cognitive and language development, the quality of the relationship with the mother (attachment, responsiveness to mothers), and socioemotional competence. Children of high-functioning depressed mothers were not significantly different from children of nondepressed mothers in cognitive and language development and in attachment and responsiveness to the mother, but displayed more behavior problems and less social competence. Findings reveal stable differences in parenting within a sample of depressed mothers, support a stress and coping perspective on why these differences occur, and demonstrate their potential role in determining the risk children of depressed mothers face over the first 3 years.

Attachment security and recent stressful life events predict oxytocin levels: a pilot study of pregnant women with high levels of cumulative psychosocial adversity

“…Indeed, higher levels of prenatal OT may be especially important to mothers with mental illness because, as a group, they are at risk of exhibiting poorer interactive behaviors with their infants (Coyne, Low, Miller, Seifer, & Dickstein, 2007;Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2003;Lovejoy, Graczyk, O'Hare, & Neuman, 2000). Maternal interactive behaviors are linked, in turn, to a wide range of child development outcomes including attachment security (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997;Dexter, Wong, Stacks, Beeghly, & Barnett, 2013;Laucht, Esser, & Schmidt, 2002;Mäntymaa, Puura, Luoma, Salmelin, & Tamminen, 2004;Wang & Dix, 2013).…”

Stability of child temperament: Multiple moderation by child and mother characteristics

“…However, the study included a broad range of SES. Several potential moderators of stability of child temperament were examined, but additional ones, such as ethnicity (Bornstein, ; Wang & Dix, ), could be important to understanding stability of child temperament. Birth order was assessed, but this was a between‐ not within‐family design, which should be considered in future methodological refinements.…”

Response to Infant Cry in Clinically Depressed and Non-Depressed Mothers

“…However, maternal depression interrupts sensitive responsiveness and is an established predictor of parenting problems and poor child outcomes [55,22,17,28,56,57]. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to specifically investigate maternal behavior in the context of infant crying, comparing samples of mothers with clinical depression to non-depressed mothers.…”