Depressed Mothers and Problem Behaviours in their Adolescent Daughters: The mediating roles of parenting and attachment security

Abstract

Symptoms and episodes of depression in mothers consistently predict internalizing and externalizing symptoms in their children. Depression is also associated with attachment anxiety and avoidance, and poor parenting practices, which in turn also predict problem outcomes in youth. As girls enter puberty, rates of depression begin to increase dramatically relative to boys, which makes this developmental period well-suited to studying the mechanisms through which maternal depression may lead to depression and other unwanted symptoms in their adolescent daughters. One hundred and fifty-one mother-daughter pairs from two Canadian cities were interviewed with respect to their current and past mental health status. Mothers completed questionnaires with respect to their own depressive symptoms, romantic attachment, parenting practices, and their daughters' disruptive behaviours. Girls completed measures of their own symptoms of depression, their attachment to their mother, and aspects of their mothers' parenting. Daughter outcomes of depression and disruptive behavior were assessed again one year later. Mothers' parenting practices fully mediated the pathway between maternal depression and daughters' disruptive behavior. In combination with daughters' attachment to their mothers, parenting partially mediated the same relationship one year later. Parenting and attachment also significantly predicted daughters' depressive symptoms at Time I. After controlling for the influence of mothers' parenting, daughters' attachment, and daughters' outcomes at Time I, maternal depression at Time I continued to significantly and directly predict both daughter outcomes one year later. Combined, these results suggest that maternal depression may in part impact on daughters disruptive behavior through its influence on mothers' parenting, which in turn helps to shape daughters' attachment to their mothers. The fact that mothers' depressive symptoms also uniquely predict Time 2 outcomes indicates that there may be complex elements of the depression construct, not assessed in the present study, that influence adolescent well-being in a more insidious manner.