Factors Influencing Aggressive Parenting Behavior in Depressed and Non-Depressed Moms of Teenagers

What is it about?

Mothers with depression are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior with their adolescent children, including criticism, irritability, and hostility, than non-depressed mothers. Harsh parenting behavior is associated with adverse parent-child interactions and difficulties in emotional and behavioral development. Moreover, mothers with depression may be more likely to hold negative or "child-blaming" assumptions about their children's behavior and to misread their children's mood and actions. This study examined proximal social and emotional factors influencing mother's aggressive behavior during interactions with their young teenage children (ages 11-14). These factors included assumptions or attributions about the cause of the adolescents' behavior, perceived adolescent aggression, and child aggression as reported by an independent observer. In this study of 180 low-income mothers, we found that depressed mothers were more likely to initiate aggressive behavior and less likely to shift out of aggressive behavior during interactions with their teenage children. We also found that both depressed and non-depressed mothers were less likely to end aggressive behavior if they held "child-blaming" assumptions about their child's behavior. Finally, depressed mothers were less likely to end aggressive behavior if they perceived aggression in their child's behavior.

Featured Image

Photo by Tiago Bandeira on Unsplash

Photo by Tiago Bandeira on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study differs from most research on maternal depression and parenting behavior in several ways that create potential for informing interventions to reduce harsh parenting. Key among these are: 1) the recording of interactions between mothers and their children and the subsequent use of video-mediated recall procedures to examine the mothers' subjective understanding of the interaction, which allowed us to understand how mothers interpreted their and their children's behavior and mood; b) the use of sophisticated data analysis tools which enabled us to examine variables in real time, during interactions between mothers and their children; 3) the focus on parenting behavior of mothers with adolescent children, whereas most research has focused on depressed mothers of young children; and 4) the inclusion of a low-income sample, which is significant because economic disadvantage is associated with aggressive parenting behavior. Findings from this study have the potential to inform interventions that help mothers learn skills to both reduce the frequency of aggressive behavior with their children and to end aggressive behavior when it occurs.