Child Characteristics Modulate Trajectories of Pre- to Postpartum Maternal Anxiety

• In Event: 3-034 - Child-Directed and Bidirectional Parent-Child Effects Involving Maternal Mental Health

Integrative Statement

An abundance of empirical work has shown that high levels of parent anxiety symptoms, particularly in mothers, are associated with an increased risk for anxiety problems in offspring. However, this literature has largely ignored the possibility that risk for increased anxiety symptoms in the parent-child dyad operates both from parents to children and also from children to parents. The idea that the effects of parent-child interactions are bidirectional is rooted in classic developmental theory (Bell, 1968), yet the possibility that child-based characteristics influence levels of parent symptoms known to be critical in the early environment frequently remains ignored. To address this oversight in the literature, we tested the possibility that infant characteristics, particularly levels of negative reactivity in infants which may be stressful for mothers (Mäntymaa et al., 2009), modulate trajectories of maternal anxiety symptoms. We tested both parent perceptions and a biological measure of infant negative reactivity to novelty. To avoid a confound with pre-existing mother-child interactions, we tested this trajectory from pre (second and third trimester of pregnancy) to post-partum (infant age 4 months).

Ninety-two mothers-to-be were enrolled in a study of maternal mental health. Participation included two prenatal laboratory visits: one each during the second (M = 21.15 weeks; SD = 3.79) and third trimester (M = 35.92 weeks; SD = 1.47), and a final postnatal visit at infant age 4 months (M = 4.27, SD = 0.62). Rolling recruitment procedures resulted in 81 participants at the second trimester visit, 85 mothers at the third trimester visit, and 75 participants at infant age 4 months.
Mothers reported their current levels of anxiety symptoms using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (Meyer et al., 1990) at each phase of the study. At infant age 4 months, mothers reported on levels of negative affect in infants using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire – Revised version (Garstein & Rothbart, 2003). Infants’ negative reactivity to a series of moderately stressful novel laboratory procedures (Goldsmith & Rothbart, 1999; Kagan, 1996) was assessed via a measure of change in salivary cortisol (reactivity = post-visit cortisol – pre-visit cortisol).

Greater maternal-rated negativity in infants was associated with less negative quadratic change in anxiety symptoms (B = 0.56, SE(B) = 0.29, p = 0.05) suggesting that maternal anxiety symptoms declined more during the postnatal period for mothers of infants rated as less negative. In contrast, mothers of infants who showed greater cortisol reactivity had higher and greater variability in anxiety symptoms (intercept: B = 8.41, SE(B) = 2.95, p = 0.00; quadratic change: B = -0.80, SE(B) = 0.40, p = 0.04) from pre- to postpartum. Together, these findings both expand on the previous work suggesting the importance of the mother-infant context for understanding developmental change and also add to our knowledge of infant-based effects on maternal mental health.

Authors

• Rebecca Brooker, Texas A&M
  Presenting Author

• Sejal Mistry, Texas A&M University
  Non-Presenting Author