The Development of Adolescents’ Internalizing Behavior: Longitudinal Effects of Maternal Sensitivity and Child Inhibition

Abstract

Internalizing symptoms such as withdrawn and anxious-depressed behavior are common in adolescence. This prospective longitudinal study helps to gain insight into the development of internalizing behavior, focusing on the role of early parent-child interaction while ruling out genetic similarity as a confounder. More specifically, the central question addressed in this study was whether parental sensitivity and child inhibited temperament predict children's withdrawn and anxious-depressed behavior in middle childhood and adolescence. We followed 160 early-adopted children (53 % girls) from infancy to adolescence. Structural equation modeling was used to test relationships both prospectively and concurrently. The results revealed that more sensitive parenting in infancy and middle childhood predicted less inhibited behavior in adolescence, which in turn predicted fewer internalizing problems in adolescence. The findings suggest that maternal sensitivity lowers adolescents' inhibited behavior and decreases the risk for adolescents' internalizing problem behavior indirectly through lower levels of inhibition. Supporting sensitive parenting in the years before adolescence may protect children from developing inhibited behavior and internalizing behavior problems in adolescence.

Temperament and Parenting Styles in Early Childhood Differentially Influence Neural Response to Peer Evaluation in Adolescence

“…These differences are highly salient to the development of children with BI, as they already face high risk for social anxiety. Indeed, associations between parenting style, whether harsh or supportive, and outcomes, including later psychopathology, are stronger in children with BI relative to children without BI (Degnan, Almas, & Fox, 2010; Hastings et al, 2008; Kertes et al, 2009; Rubin, Burgess, Dwyer, & Hastings, 2003; van der Voort et al, 2014; Williams et al, 2009), consistent with a diathesis-stress model of development (Hankin & Abela, 2006). …”

From maternal sensitivity in infancy to adult attachment representations: a longitudinal adoption study with secure base scripts

“…indicators of maternal sensitivity in structural equation modeling in previous reports on the same sample (see van der Voort et al, 2014;van der Voort, Linting, Juffer, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2013). Principal component analyses were performed on the subscales of maternal sensitivity at 12, 18 and 30 months, and all analyses resulted in a one-dimensional solution, with explained variance ranging between 48% and 53%.…”

The Dopamine D2 Receptor Polymorphism (DRD2 TaqIA) Interacts with Maternal Parenting in Predicting Early Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: Evidence of Differential Susceptibility and Age Differences

“…Negative parenting, such as rejection (Nolan et al 2003), punishment (Hipwell et al 2008), and abuse (Moretti and Craig 2013) can make adolescents become increasingly self-critical (Gaté et al 2013) and more sensitive to stressors (Monroe and Harkness 2005), and hence put them at elevated risk for depression. In contrast, positive parenting, including maternal acceptance (Garber et al 1997), support (Vaughan et al 2010) and sensitivity (van der Voort et al 2014) have protective effects on the development of depression, because such parenting can help adolescents develop a positive self-perception (Katz and Hunter 2007) and provide guidance regarding coping to and adaptation in stressful circumstances (Yang and Yeh 2006).…”