Protective Factors for Depression Among African American Children of Predominantly Low-Income Mothers with Depression

Abstract

Maternal depression has a deleterious impact on child psychological outcomes, including depression symptoms. However, there is limited research on the protective factors for these children and even less for African Americans. The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of positive parenting skills on child depression and the potential protective effects of social skills and kinship support among African American children whose mothers are depressed and low-income. African American mothers (n = 77) with a past year diagnosis of a depressive disorder and one of their children (ages 8–14) completed self-report measures of positive parenting skills, social skills, kinship support, and depression in a cross-sectional design. Regression analyses demonstrated that there was a significant interaction effect of positive parenting skills and child social skills on child depression symptoms. Specifically, parent report of child social skills was negatively associated with child depression symptoms for children exposed to poorer parenting skills; however, this association was not significant for children exposed to more positive and involved parenting. Kinship support did not show a moderating effect, although greater maternal depression severity was correlated with more child-reported kinship support. The study findings have implications for developing interventions for families with maternal depression. In particular, parenting and child social skills are potential areas for intervention to prevent depression among African American youth.

Comportamentos internalizantes: associações com habilidades sociais, práticas educativas, recursos do ambiente familiar e depressão materna

“…Analogamente, a qualidade do ambiente familiar, assinalada pela diversidade de contextos de interação, foi diretamente correlacionada com habilidades sociais infantis relatadas na entrevista. Essa configuração de resultados é compatível com uma interpretação do efeito protetor das práticas educativas positivas (Boyd & Waanders, 2013;Luyckx et al, 2011) e da qualidade do ambiente familiar (Kelley et al, 2011;Rijlaarsdam et al, 2013), pela via do fortalecimento das habilidades sociais da criança (Bolsoni-Silva et al, 2011). A afirmativa de que as práticas positivas previnem o surgimento de problemas de comportamento e promovem habilidades sociais infantis (Bolsoni-Silva et al, 2011) foi em parte confirmada, pois tais relações apareceram nas análises de correlações, ainda que não tenham sido detectadas nas comparações de grupos.…”

“…Assim, há algum indício de que problemas de comportamento precoces predizem sintomas internalizantes na meninice (Burt & Roisman, 2010). Em contrapartida, habilidades sociais contribuem para a atenuação de tais sintomas, engendrando mecanismos de proteção (Boyd & Waanders, 2013;Letcher, Sanson, Smart & Toumbourou, 2012;Wichstrom, Belsky & Berg-Nielse, 2013).…”

Parental strain, mental health problems, and parenting practices: A longitudinal study

“…These results add to the evidence supporting the importance of addressing parental victimization experiences in prevention efforts, especially when taking into account the noted links between exposure to community violence and aggressive parenting practices (Zhang, & Anderson, 2010), which are known to be harmful to children's well-being and are related to aggressive child behaviors (Zhang, & Eamon, 2011). Indeed, poor maternal health consistently is linked to children's negative outcomes (Boyd & Waanders, 2013; Goodman, 2007), and harsh parenting is associated with increased relational aggression among youth (Kawabata, Alink, Tseng, IJzendoorn, & Crick, 2011) and children's academic problems (Barry, Lochman, Fite, Wells, & Colder, 2012). …”

Associations Between Early Maternal Depressive Symptom Trajectories and Toddlers’ Felt Security at 18 Months: Are Boys and Girls at Differential Risk?

“…How maternal social support may contribute to resilient maternal and child outcomes also has been understudied in this cohort. Maternal social support is a well‐known resilience factor for many African American and other ethnic minority mothers of young children (Boyd & Waanders, ; Hess, Papas, & Black, ; Huang et al., ; Manuel et al., ).…”