Maternal mental health, child care quality, and children's behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.05.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Preschool age children have been found to be susceptible to maternal depression and anger.

  • High quality child care buffers the effects of maternal depression and anger on their children.

  • The buffering effect was sustained to first grade.

Abstract

Moderating effects of non-parental preschool child care quality on the impact of maternal mental health risks on children's behavioral and mental health outcomes were examined. The paper presents data both on the concurrent buffering effects on children at the age of 4 ½ while they are in child care as well as on the longitudinal effects on the children two years later in the first grade. Study participants included 294 mothers, fathers, their children, their children's non-parental caregivers in preschool child care programs and their children's first grade teachers from the Wisconsin Study of Families and Work. Using regression models to examine moderation, we found that in low quality child care, children exposed to elevated maternal depressive symptoms and anger showed more behavioral problems and worse prosocial functioning. In contrast, children in high quality child care did not present higher symptoms in relation to elevated mother mental health risks. Significant moderating effects were found in both concurrent and longitudinal analyses. Results point to potential buffering effects of high quality care for children faced with adverse family factors.

Section snippets

Sample

This study uses data collected on participants of the Wisconsin Study of Families and Work (WSFW; Hyde et al., 1995). In the first assessment wave, the WSFW enrolled 570 families from the Madison and Milwaukee areas during women's second trimester of pregnancy through obstetrics clinics, private and university hospital clinics, and a large health maintenance organization. Out of those 560 had live births and were eligible to continue in the study. For the purpose of this paper, we have examined

Results

The child outcome variables were moderately to highly correlated within the same measure (e.g., for PBQ subscales r = .42–.65) and weakly to moderately correlated with each other across the measures (. r = .17–.59; see Table 1). Even though the high correlations indicate some overlap between the PBQ subscales, moderation results are presented for all three subscales because they have been linked differentially to child maladaptive behaviors. For example, scores on the Hostile–Aggressive subscale in

Discussion

This study confirms and extends findings on the relationships between maternal mental health, child mental health and the role that high quality child care can play in buffering the connection between maternal and child mental health. In these analyses appropriate controls were used to avoid confounding family SES and parental child rearing strategies with the child care quality, child outcomes and maternal mental health variables. The study replicates the results from the maternal mental

Author Notes and Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the National Institute of Mental Health (grant R01-MH044340) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on “Psychopathology and Development” and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous support for this research.

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