1-023 - At-risk Women's Adjustment to Parenthood: Responses to Infant Distress

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The transition to parenthood is highly challenging for women with traumatic experiences and mental health problems. In particular responding to infant crying may constitute a major challenge for women with childhood-related or current risks, which could set the stage for decreased well-being, parenting difficulties and adverse child outcomes. This symposium brings together three studies using cry paradigms to examine the associations between women’s at-risk status (i.e. current and past trauma or depressive symptomatology) and their neural, cognitive and physiological responses to infant distress.

The first paper examines the effects of current depressive symptoms and depression history on mothers’ neural processing of their infants’ cry sounds, and unexpectedly found that depressive symptomatology was associated with increased Medial Temporal Gyrus activation, suggestive of heightened saliency to infant crying. The second paper tested cognitive responses to infant distress. Sense of parenting competence was less resilient among women exposed to adverse childhood experiences when confronted with infant temperamental difficulty in a cry paradigm during pregnancy or with their own infant’s negative reactivity postpartum. The third paper focuses on the link between women’s history of childhood and adult trauma and their prenatal physiological responses to infant crying associated with women’s caregiving behaviors and child outcomes. Discussion will focus on the predictive value of cry paradigms for dealing with real life parenting challenges and on implications for prevention and intervention efforts for at-risk women during the transition to parenthood.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Florentina Catharina Kunseler, Vu University Amsterdam

Discussant

• Mirjam Oosterman, Vu University Amsterdam

Individual Presentations

• Mothers’ Neural Response to Infant Cry Stimuli is Associated With Both Current and Past Depression - Presenting Author: Eydie Moses-Kolko, University Of Pittsburgh Medical School (UPMC); Carlos Zevallos, University of Pittsburgh; Mary Phillips, University of Pittsburgh; James E. Swain, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Stephanie Stepp, University of Pittsburgh; Alison E Hipwell, University of Pittsburgh

• Predicting Parenting Self-Efficacy: The Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Infant Distress - Presenting Author: Florentina Catharina Kunseler, Vu University Amsterdam; Mirjam Oosterman, Vu University Amsterdam; Marleen de Moor, Vu University Amsterdam; Carlo Schuengel, Vu University Amsterdam

• Prenatal Reactivity to Infant Cry Predicts Adjustment to Motherhood: The Moderating Role of a History of Trauma - Presenting Author: Jennifer C Ablow, University of Oregon; Ariel Carter-Rodriguez, Univ of Oregon; Michelle Fong, University of Oregon; Elisabeth Conradt, Univ of Utah; Jeffrey Measelle, University of Oregon