Mothers' Depressive Symptoms and Child Externalizing Problems: Aversion Sensitivity as an Underlying Mechanism

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Anat Moed
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12469

A MBar-Ilan University

Mothers’ Depressive Symptoms and Child

Externalizing Problems: Aversion Sensitivity as an

Underlying Mechanism

Background: The mechanisms responsible

for why depressed parenting undermines child

development are poorly understood. One pro-

posal is that depressive symptoms increase

mothers’ aversion sensitivity, therebyincreasing

the frequency of mothers’ negative emotional

arousal.

Objective: This study examined aversion sensi-

tivity as a marker of maladaptive emotional pro-

cesses occurring in depressed mothers to explain

why mothers’ depressive symptoms so consis-

tently disrupt child behavior.

Method: During a 2-year period, mothers’

depressive symptoms and children’s external-

izing problems were measured repeatedly;

interactions between mothers and their

4- to 11-year-old children were observed

(Ndyad =284).

Results: Results demonstrated that mothers’

aversion sensitivity mediated the relation

between mothers’ depressive symptoms and

child externalizing problems in the next assess-

ment.

Conclusion: Aversion sensitivity may underlie

depression-related parenting problems. It has

the potential to clarify why depressive symptoms

predict dysfunctional parenting and, as a result,

developmental problems in children.

School of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan,

5290002 Israel (anat.moed@biu.ac.il).

Key Words: child externalizing problems,emotion, maternal

depression, parent–child interactions,parenting.

Implications: Aversion sensitivity has the

potential to elucidate how and why depressive

adaptations to a large number of personal and

social circumstances reduce parenting compe-

tence and predict developmental problems in

children.

A substantial body of research demonstrates that

mothers’ depressive symptoms (DS) are a major

risk factor for children, placing them at risk for

a variety of developmental problems (Goodman

et al., 2011; Hammen, 2009). To a considerable

degree, these problems are known to reect

parenting decits associated with DS (e.g.,

Goodman, 2007;Joormanet al., 2009).Yet

not all depressed mothers parent poorly (Field

etal.,2003), and many children of depressed

mothers do not manifest poor outcomes (Pargas

et al., 2010).Thesendingsstresstheimpor-

tance of better understanding the nature of

depressed parenting and its signicance to

children’s development.

A prominent proposal suggests that the links

between parents’ DS and negative child out-

comes reect parents’ maladaptive emotional

processes activated by DS (see Dix & Meu-

nier,2009), yet this proposal remains largely

understudied. The effects of mothers’ DS on

children’s behavior through maternal emotion

are of particular interest, given that depression

is, in part, a disorder of emotion and affec-

tive modulation (Rottenberg, 2017). In line with

recent calls for advancing the science of parental

Family Relations 69 (December 2020): 1087–10991087

DOI:10.1111/fare.12469