Poster #96 - Maternal Depression among Mothers of Preschoolers: The Role of Social Support

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Depression among mothers with young children is a significant public health problem. This is largely due to the well-documented association between maternal depression and impaired maternal parenting quality (e.g., Ertel, Edwards & Koenen, 2011). Disruptions in parenting quality and parent-child interactions resulting from maternal depression can negatively impact children’s cognitive development with possible lifelong effects (Ibanez et. al, 2015; Ertel, et al., 2011). Thus, identifying protective factors against maternal depression, particularly for mothers with children in the sensitive early years of cognitive development, is crucial.
One potentially promising factor that may reduce maternal depression is the amount and quality of social support available to the mother. The broader mental health literature shows that social support has been consistently effective in reducing depression through targeting its causal mechanisms (Reid & Taylor, 2015). Social support appears to be a safe, inexpensive and non-pharmaceutical alternative depression treatment. Several studies have looked at social support as a protective factor for maternal depression, but limited their focus to the post-partum period. Whether and the extent to which social support moderates associations between maternal depression and children’s cognitive development as children approach kindergarten remains unknown. Given that maternal depression affects the early cognitive skills of children entering kindergarten, and that these early achievement disparities typically persist as children age (Reardon, 2011), then addressing depression in mothers of children approaching kindergarten age is critical. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature.
We use the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a national sample of approximately 10,700 children born in the U.S. in 2001. The ECLS-B collected data on children and families across 4 waves: when children were born, in 2001; in 2003 when they were 2 years old; in 2004 when they were preschool-age; and in 2006-2007 at kindergarten entry. Our analysis uses data from the preschool wave and includes approximately 8,500 mothers with valid data on self-reported maternal depression (collected via the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale [CES-D]). Our measures of social support include 3 binary variables tapping availability of parenting advice, whether participants are involved in community activities, and whether they have a person to call in an emergency.
Preliminary analyses suggest that among mothers of preschool-aged children, use of social support is lower among depressed mothers. Specifically, bivariate t-tests reveal that depressed mothers are less likely to receive parenting advice than non-depressed moms (t=-6.92; p=0.00), less likely to be involved in community activities (t=7.96; p=0.00) and are less likely to have someone they could call in case of emergency (t=-2.13; p=0.03).
We begin our inquiry into the role of social support for depressed mothers of young children by documenting whether use of social support varies by maternal depression status. Next steps include implementing multivariate regression models (1) to predict maternal depressive symptoms from social support variables, controlling for confounding factors such as family background and household economic characteristics, and (2) to test whether associations between maternal depression and children’s cognitive outcomes in preschool vary by social support.

Authors

• Ariella Grosse, Georgetown University
  Presenting Author

• Anna Johnson, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Author