Maternal Mental Health, Maternal sensibility, and cognitive stimulation during infancy: The case of Chile

• In Event: Sensitivity and parental mental health

Abstract

Research has shown that parental mental health is indeed related to child outcomes and the quality of parent-child interactions. The evidence pointed to the importance of interactions between significant adults and children for child development, particularly during early childhood (Britto et al., 2016; Malin et al., 2014, Topping et al., 2011).

In developed countries, it has been widely evidenced that maternal mental health is related to maternal sensitivity (Bernard et al., 2018; Newland et al., 2016) and cognitive stimulation. Maternal mental health is one of the parental characteristics that most affect their children's language development (Topping et al., 2011). Research suggests that children of mothers with depression have poorer language development than children of mothers without depression (Quevedo et al., 2012). In addition, elevated maternal depressive symptoms are also associated with children's socioemotional (Emma et al., 2020; Leckman-Westin et al., 2009; Wu & Gazelle, 2021) and cognitive development (Ibanez et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2017). However, in Latin American countries, the evidence regarding this topic is scarce, and the associations between maternal mental health and maternal sensitivity and cognitive stimulation are less clear (Alvarenga et al., 2013; Fonseca et al., 2010; Schwengber & Piccinini, 2004).

There is a critical need to extend studies to infancy (as maternal care is the more frequent type of care during the first year of children), focusing on a much more comprehensive range of study populations, encompassing non-industrialized regions and Latin America. For this reason, this paper focuses on understanding how maternal' mental health, such as stress and depression, can influence a child's cognitive and language development directly or indirectly through parental practices such as maternal sensitivity and cognitive stimulation and that these factors occur within a specific social context.

We used data from the first wave of Chilean Longitudinal Study One Thousand First Days, implemented in 2019 (N = 1161; 49% girls; Aged = 13.2 months). Maternal depression was measured with the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D 10), and for maternal stress, we used Parent Stress Index (PSI). In addition, maternal sensitivity was measured with Three Bags Task (an observational measure), and for cognitive stimulation, we used Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory (HOME-EC).

Using a series of linear regressions and controlling by different children, home, and maternal characteristics, we found that maternal stress and not maternal depression are directly associated with children's expressive and receptive language (measured by Bayley Cognitive Scale-III). Interestingly, maternal depression is negatively associated with cognitive stimulation but not maternal sensitivity. In contrast, maternal stress is negatively associated with maternal sensitivity, but it is not associated with cognitive stimulation (see figure 1). Our findings raise the question of whether some well-known relations are not the same in a different context (Latin American country). In this scenario, it is essential to ask whether shortfalls of inter-tool concordance and construct validity in the instruments used to assess this different construct may be at issue.

Author

• Marigen Narea, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  Presenting Author