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; Joorman et al., 2009). Yet

not all depressed mothers parent poorly (Field

et al., 2003), and many children of depressed

mothers do not manifest poor outcomes (Pargas

et al., 2010). These ndings stress the impor-

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): 1087–1099 1087

DOI:10.1111/fare.12469