Maternal Postpartum Anxiety Trajectory Moderates the Bidirectional Association Between Maternal Intrusiveness and Infant Fear

• In Event: Emotional Competence from Infancy to Late Childhood

Abstract

Background. Maternal postpartum anxiety has been associated with adverse maternal and child outcomes, such as intrusive parenting and infant fear (Feldman et al., 2009). Extending a transactional model of child development (Sameroff, 2009), the bidirectional association between intrusive parenting and infant fear may be moderated by maternal postpartum anxiety (Kiel & Buss, 2013). On one hand, child psychopathology usually develops under both parental psychopathology and suboptimal parenting (Sturge-Apple et al., 2009). On the other hand, the effect of infant fear on parenting behaviors under changing maternal anxiety levels remains less understood. The current study aims to understand the intergenerational transmission of anxiety by investigating how maternal anxiety trajectories throughout first two years postpartum moderated the bidirectional associations between maternal intrusive parenting and infant fear.
Methods. Participants included 1,292 mother-infant pairs (657 boys), prospectively assessed at four times when infants were 2, 6, 15, and 24 months old. Maternal postpartum anxiety symptoms were self-reported on the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (Derogatis, 2000) at all four time points. When infants were 6-, 15- and 24-month old, maternal intrusive parenting was coded from a mother-child interaction task, and infant fear was observed from the mask task (Goldsmith & Rothbart, 1996). Covariates included infant sex and family income.
Results. Unconditional growth models revealed that mothers had stable anxiety levels from 2 months to 24 months (B = 0.01, SE = 0.01, t = 1.48, p = .14). From 6 months to 24 months, infant fear increased (B = 0.04, SE = 0.002, t = 17.21, p < .001), and maternal intrusive parenting remained stable (B = 0.00, SE = 0.002, t = -0.04, p = .97). A structural equation model further estimated the paths from the intercept of maternal intrusive parenting to the slope of infant fear, and from the intercept of infant fear to the slope of maternal intrusive parenting, with the intercept and slope factors of maternal postpartum anxiety as moderators. An interaction between maternal intrusiveness intercept and anxiety intercept predicted an increase in child fear over time (B = -0.004, SE = 0.002, t = -2.07, p = .04). Only when mothers had low initial levels of anxiety, initial intrusive parenting predicted a faster increase in child fear (B = 0.01, SE = 0.01, t = 2.14, p = .03). Another interaction between infant fear intercept and maternal anxiety slope predicted the change in maternal intrusive parenting (B = -0.83, SE = 0.39, t = -2.13, p = .03). Only when mothers had a fast increase in anxiety over time, initial infant fear predicted a steady reduction in maternal intrusiveness (B = -0.13, SE = 0.07, t = -1.99, p = .05).
Conclusions. Findings of the current study unpacked the multifaced pathways in the intergenerational transmission of anxiety, and underscored the bidirectional relations between maternal and child behaviors. This study highlighted understanding parenting behaviors from both maternal and child characteristics. Findings have clinical implications for intervention programs aimed at interrupting the negative reciprocal mother-child patterns among mothers with high anxiety.

Author

• Qiong Wu, Florida State Univeristy
  Presenting Author