Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:54:49.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Depressed mothers' behavioral competence with their infants: Demographic and psychosocial correlates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Douglas M. Teti*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland Baltimore County
Donna M. Gelfand
Affiliation:
University of Utah
Janiece Pompa
Affiliation:
University of Utah
*
Address reprint requests to: Douglas M. Teti, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21228.

Abstract

A multidimensional study examined individual differences in observed behavior of 59 depressed mothers interacting with their 3–13-month-old infants in relation to selected demographic and psychosocial variables. Maternal competence–defined as sensitive, affectively appropriate maternal behavior, was positively related to maternal education, family income, and the number of hours mothers worked outside the home. Maternal competence was inversely related to life stress, marital discord, poor social support, and infant difficulty; all of these relations appeared to be mediated by the women's feelings of self-efficacy in the maternal role. A “risk index,” composed of noncorrelated variables (family income, hours per week mother worked outside the home, and maternal self-efficacy), was strongly related to maternal parenting competence. These results suggest that the quality of depressed mothers' behavior with their babies is related to self-evaluations and contextual risk or protective factors. The findings also highlight the heterogeneity in life circumstances and functioning of depressed women and the probable resulting variability in the level of functioning of their children.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanisms in human agency. American Psychologists, 37, 122147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social-cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Bates, J. E., Freeland, C. A., & Lounsbury, M. L. (1979). Measurement of infant difficultness. Child Development, 50, 794803.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beck, A. T., Ward, C. H., Mendelson, M., Mock, J., & Erbaugh, J. (1961). An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 4, 561571.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bettes, B. A. (1988). Maternal depression and motherese: Temporal and intonational features. Child Development, 59, 10891096.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Billings, A. G., & Moos, R. H. (1983). Comparisons of children of depressed and nondepressed parents: A social-environmental perspective. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 11, 483486.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Billings, A. G., Moos, R. H. (1985). Children of parents with unipolar depression: A controlled 1-year follow-up. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 14, 149166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell, B. M., Heider, J., & Kaplan, B. (1966). The Inventory of Home Stimulation. Little Rock, AR: Center for Early Development and Education.Google Scholar
Campbell, S. B. (1979). Mother-infant interaction as a function of maternal ratings of temperament. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 10, 6776.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cicchetti, D. (1990). An historical perspective on the discipline of developmental psychopathology. In Rolf, J., Masten, A., Cicchetti, D., Neuchterlein, K., & Weintraub, S. (Eds.), Risk and protective factors in the development of psychopathology. (pp. 228). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicchetti, D., & Aber, J. L. (1986). Early precursors of later depression: An organizational perspective. In Lipsitt, L. & Rovee-Collier, C. (Eds.), Advances in infancy research (Vol. 4, pp. 87137). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Press.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, D., Toth, S., & Bush, M. (1988). Developmental psychopathology and incompetence in childhood. In Lahey, B. B. & Kazdin, A. E. (Eds.), Advances in clinical child psychology (Vol. 11, pp. 171). New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Cohn, J. F., Campbell, S. B., Matias, R., & Hopkins, J. (1990). Face-to-face interactions of postpartum depressed and nondepressed mother-infant pairs at 2 months. Developmental Psychology, 26, 1523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, J. F., Matias, R., Tronick, E. Z., Connell, D., & Lyons-Ruth, K. (1986). Face-to-face interactions of depressed mothers and their infants. In Tronick, E. Z. & Field, T. (Eds.), Maternal depression and infant disturbance. New directions for child development (W. Damon, Editor-in-chief) (Pp. 3145). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Conger, R. D., McCarty, J. A., Yang, R. K., Lahey, B. B., & Kropp, J. P. (1984). Perception of child, child-rearing values, and emotional distress as mediating links between environmental Stressors and observed maternal behavior. Child Development, 55, 22342247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cox, A. D., Puckering, C., Pound, A., & Mills, M. (1987). The impact of maternal depression in young children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 28, 917928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cox, M. J., Owen, M. T., Lewis, J. M., & Henderson, V. K. (1989). Marriages, adult adjustment, and early parenting. Child Development, 60, 10151024.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crnic, K. A., Greenberg, M. T., Ragozin, A. S., Robinson, N. M., & Basham, R. B. (1983). Effects of stress and social support on mothers of premature and full-term infants. Child Development, 54, 209217.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crockenberg, S., & McCluskey, K. (1986). Changes in maternal behavior during the baby's first year of life. Child Development, 57, 746753.Google Scholar
Donovan, W. L., & Leavitt, L. A. (1989). Maternal self-efficacy and infant attachment: Integrating physiology, perceptions, and behavior. Child Development, 60, 460472.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Downey, G., & Coyne, J. C. (1990). Children of depressed parents: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 5076.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Emery, R., Weintraub, S., & Neale, J. M. (1982). Effects of marital discord on the school behavior of children of schizophrenic, affectively disordered, and normal parents. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 10, 215228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Field, T., Healy, B., Goldstein, S., & Guthertz, M. (1990). Behavior-state matching and synchrony in mother-infant interactions of nondepressed versus depressed dyads. Developmental Psychology, 26, 714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelfand, D. M., & Teti, D. M. (1990). Effects of maternal depression on children. Clinical Psychology Review, 10, 329353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelfand, D. M., & Peterson, D. M. (1985). Child development and psychopathology (Vol. 1). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Goldberg, S. (1977). Social competence in infancy: A model of parent-infant interaction. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 23, 163177.Google Scholar
Goldberg, W., & Easterbrooks, M. A. (1984). Role of marital quality in toddler development. Developmental Psychology, 20, 504514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammen, C., Adrian, C., Gordon, D., Burge, D., Jaenicke, C., & Hiroto, D. (1987). Children of depressed mothers: Maternal strain and symptom predictors of dysfunction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 96, 190198.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henderson, S., Byrne, D. G., & Duncan-Jones, P. (1981). Neurosis and the social environment. Sydney: Academic Press Australia.Google Scholar
Kanner, A. D., Coyne, J. C., Schaefer, C., & Lazarus, R. S. (1981). Comparison of two modes of stress measurement: Daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4, 139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Livingood, A. B., Daen, P., & Smith, B. D. (1983). The depressed mother as a source of stimulation for her infant. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 39, 369375.3.0.CO;2-8>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Locke, H., & Wallace, K. (1959). Short marital-adjustment and prediction tests: Their reliability and validity. Marriage and Family Living, 21, 251255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons-Ruth, K., Zoll, D., Connell, D., & Grune-baum, H. U. (1986). The depressed mother and her one-year-old infant: Environment, interaction, attachment, and infant development. In Tronick, E. Z. & Field, T. (Eds.), Maternal depression and infant disturbance. New direction for child development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Radke-Yarrow, M., Cummings, E. M., Kuczynski, L., & Chapman, M. (1985). Patterns of attachment in two- and three-year olds in normal families and families with parental depression. Child Development, 56, 884893.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sameroff, A. J., Seifer, R., & Zax, M. (1982). Early development of children at risk for emotional disorder. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 47(1, Serial No. 199).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sarason, I. G., Johnson, J. H., & Siegel, J. M. (1978). Assessing the impact of life changes: Development of the life experiences survey. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 932946.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seifer, R., Sameroff, A. J., & Jones, F. H. (1981). Adaptive behavior in young children of emotionally disturbed women. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1, 251276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spanier, G. B. (1976). Measuring dyadic adjustment: New scales for assessing the quality of marriage and similar dyads. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38, 1528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teti, D. M., & Gelfand, D. M. (April, 1990). Maternal depression, parenting, and maternal self-efficacy: A longitudinal study of mothers and infants. In Field, T. (Chair), Maternal depression: Effects on infants. A symposium presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal, Quebec.Google Scholar
Weissman, M. M., Paykel, E. S., & Klerman, G. L. (1972). The depressed woman as a mother. Social Psychiatry, 7, 98108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissman, M. M., Prusoff, B. A., Gammon, G. D., Merikangas, K. R., Leckman, J. F., & Kidd, K. K. (1984). Psychopathy in children (ages 6–18) of depressed and normal parents. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 23, 7884.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zoll, D. A., Lyons-Ruth, K., & Connell, D. (1984). Infants at psychiatric risk: Maternal behavior, depression, and family history. Paper presented at the 92nd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario.Google Scholar