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Introduction: Our goal was to evaluate the impact of depressed mothers' marital intimacy and attachment security in romantic relationships on children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Method: Forty-six clinically depressed mothers rated attachment security, marital intimacy, and symptoms shown by their children aged 8 to 12. Results: Maternal avoidance of closeness predicted increases in children's internalizing symptoms over a 6-month period. Discussion: Avoidance of closeness in depressed mothers may be implicated in the development of internalizing symptoms in their children, possibly because individuals who are avoidant of closeness are poor caregivers.
Fam Proc 44:93-103, 2005
The children of depressed mothers are at risk for emotional distress (Downey & Coyne, 1990; Goodman & Gotlib, 1999). A recent meta-analytic review quantified this association; maternal depression was associated with both internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children, with effect sizes of .16 and .14, respectively (Connell & Goodman, 2002). However, we have a very limited understanding of why maternal depression is detrimental to children's well being.
Maternal depression is associated with a range of contextual variables, including marital conflict and breakdown (Fendrich, Warner, & Weissman, 1990; Hammen et al., 1987), which might account for the apparent association between maternal depression and children's emotional distress. Although some researchers consider marital distress a confound or spurious variable that independently increases the risk of both parental depression and adverse child outcomes (Fergusson, Horwood, & Lynskey, 1995), others conceptualize it as a potential mediator because of evidence that depressed persons generate interpersonal difficulties, including marital conflict (Goodman & Gotlib, 1999).
A handful of studies have tested the hypothesis that marital difficulties mediate the link between maternal depression and children's emotional distress. An early cross-sectional study of inpatients diagnosed with unipolar depression showed that the association between depression and children's school problems, particularly externalizing behaviors, was fully accounted for by marital discord (Emery, Weintraub, & Neale, 1982). Similar results were reported by Davies, Dumenci, and Windle (1999) in a longitudinal study of adolescents. Miller and her colleagues (1993) extended these findings by hypothesizing that marital conflict has an impact on parenting, which then influences levels of externalizing behaviors. They found support for this hypothesis in the cross-sectional data provided by two samples of families, one with children aged 3 1/2 and the other with...