Maternal Depression and Mother-Child Reminiscing of Emotional Events during the Pandemic

• In Event: Learning Through Parent-Child Conversations in Diverse Contexts

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected family well-being. It is a particularly challenging time for parents with emotional disorders and their young children. Understanding the interactive dynamics in these families can inform effective interventions and facilitate positive development. Against this backdrop, we examined reminiscing about emotional events between depressive mothers and their preschool-age children during the pandemic. Mother-child reminiscing about children’s past experiences is critical for emerging socioemotional development. Such conversations teach children how to interpret and understand past events and further shape children’s personal narratives. Reminiscing about emotion-laden events further provides an effective means for emotion socialization. Little is known, however, about parental reminiscing beyond normative development.

Maternal depression is a robust risk factor for non-optimal caregiving environment and has been linked to maladaptive parenting behavior and adverse child outcomes. In particular, depressed mothers often have difficulties in providing adaptive emotion socialization to their children, which may be intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present study, we examined the prospective association between mothers’ Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and mother-child reminiscing of positive- and negative-valanced events occurred during the pandemic, while also considering the effects of changes in family life and mothers’ psychological adjustment during this stressful time.

Participants were recruited from families (residing in a Midwestern city) that enrolled in a larger longitudinal study investigating the effect of maternal depression on the development of autobiographical memory. For the present study, 67 mothers (32 with history of MDD during the child’s lifetime and 35 nondepressed) and their preschool-age children (mean age = 4.02; 31 girls) participated in an online interview via Zoom. During the interview, the dyads discussed the most positive and most negative events that the child experienced during the lockdown. The mother-child conversation was video recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded by trained research assistants. Mothers’ utterances were coded for emotion coaching (i.e., validation of child’s emotion, labeling of child’s emotional experience, explanation of the cause/consequence of emotion, and discussion of regulatory strategies) and elaborative style (i.e., open-ended questions, close-ended questions, statements). Mother’s MDD was assessed prior to the COVID pandemic, using the Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID; First, 2015).

Preliminary results indicated that although depressed and nondepressed mother did not differ in emotion coaching during discussion of the negative event, depressed mothers provided less emotion labeling than nondepressed mothers while discussing the positive event [t(57.20) = -1.86, p = .05]. Furthermore, depressed mothers were less elaborative (asking fewer open-ended questions) than nondepressed mothers in reminiscing about the negative event [t(52.37) = -1.97, p < .05], and this difference was marginally significant for the positive event [t(54.65) = -1.72, p < .10]. Thus, depression negatively impacted maternal reminiscing behavior that may have implications for children’ psychosocial outcomes. Additional analyses will examine the relations between maternal depression and mother-child reminiscing of emotional experience in the context of changing family life and mothers’ psychological adjustment during the pandemic.

Authors

• Xin Feng, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Meingold Hiu-Ming Chan, University of British Columbia (UBC)

• Karis Inboden, Ohio State University

• Yihui Gong, Ohio State University

• Qi Wang, Cornell University