What is it about?
Children's self-regulation at age 3 years alters the direction of effects between their behavioral problems and mothers' depressive symptoms across childhood, such that maternal depression contributes to school-age behavioral problems for young children with low self-regulation (as well as for boys but not for girls) while children's early behavioral problems contribute to worsening maternal depressive symptoms for young children with high self-regulation. The behavioral problems of children with low self-regulation at age 3 years predict slower improvements in mothers' depressive symptoms from early to middle childhood.
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Why is it important?
This study demonstrates that the direction of effects between child behavioral problems and maternal depressive symptoms across childhood differs depending on the early self-regulatory competence of the child. Children with strong self-regulation during the preschool years are protected from the harmful effects of maternal depression on their school-age behavioral problems, and this may explain why young boys, who typically lag behind same-age girls in self-regulation, are more likely to show stable behavioral problems and vulnerability to parental psychopathology across early childhood. Moreover, this study shows that mothers' mental health is vulnerable to their young children's early behavioral problems but only among some families.
Perspectives
This study was the core of my dissertation and allowed me to integrate advanced statistical modeling and multi-method (lab assessments and questionnaires) and multi-informant data (teachers and mothers) to clarify the complex associations between children's self-regulation, behavioral problems, and gender with mothers' depressive symptoms. My main take-away from this study is that maternal mental health is affected by the interaction of children's social and behavioral characteristics, and that child evocative effects (or child driven effects) can be identified in subsets of research samples to clarify causal processes in human development.
Dr Daniel Ewon Choe
University of California Davis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effortful Control Moderates Bidirectional Effects Between Children's Externalizing Behavior and Their Mothers' Depressive Symptoms, Child Development, May 2013, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12123.
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