Maternal depression and parenting behavior: A meta-analytic review☆
Section snippets
The parenting behaviors of depressed mothers
Early work investigating the parenting difficulties of depressed parents relied on self-report and demonstrated that depressed mothers perceived more difficulty in the parenting role than nondepressed mothers Weissman & Paykel 1974, Weissman et al. 1972. In these studies, depressed women reported “diminished emotional involvement, impaired communication, disaffection, [and] increased hostility and resentment” (Weissman et al., 1972, p. 98). The strong association between depression and
Types of parenting problems and potential moderating variables
The literature on the parenting behaviors of depressed mothers is not only characterized by diversity in the parenting behaviors that are examined, but it is also comprised of studies that are quite diverse in terms of samples, methods, and measures. The great variety among the studies makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the strength of the relationship between depression and parenting difficulties. Specifically, samples have included mothers of children of different developmental
Selection of studies
A literature search was done for all published studies from 1974 to 1996 on maternal depression and parenting behavior. A computer search of Psych Lit was conducted using combinations of the key words: mothers, maternal depression, mother–child interactions, parenting behavior, major-depression, depressed-mood, psychiatric disorders, affective disorders, and depressive symptoms. In addition, reference lists from empirical studies and review articles Downey & Coyne 1990, Rutter 1990 were perused
Results
The mean weighted effect sizes for the three categories of maternal behavior are presented in Table 3. The effect size for each category of behavior differed significantly from zero. For measures of disengaged and negative behavior, depressed mothers exhibited significantly higher levels of behavior than nondepressed mothers. On measures of positive behavior, depressed mothers exhibited significantly lower levels of behavior than nondepressed mothers. The effect sizes for measures of negative
Discussion
Qualitative reviews of research on parenting and depression have concluded that women who are depressed demonstrate a wide range of difficulties in their parenting behavior Downey & Coyne 1990, Rutter 1990. To summarize and quantify the nature of the parenting difficulties that may occur when mothers are depressed, we identified three domains of parenting behavior that had been assessed in the published literature: negative/coercive behaviors, positive behaviors, and disengagement. Our
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References marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.