Maternal depressive symptoms and children's cognitive development: Does early childcare and child's sex matter?

BACKGROUND: Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) have been associated with poorer child cognitive development. Some studies have shown that childcare attendance moderates associations between MDS and child behavior problems, but we do not know if this is the case for children's cognitive development. Furthermore, few studies have evaluated whether associations between MDS and child cognitive development differ for boys and girls at school entry. METHODS: This study used data from a population-based cohort study (n = 1364) comprising well-validated measures of children's cognitive development including academic readiness and language development in kindergarten and reading and mathematics achievement in first grade. Information on MDS was collected repeatedly from the child's age of 5 months to 5 years and on childcare from 5 months to 4.5 years. Moderation analyses were conducted to evaluate the differential associations of MDS with children's outcomes depending on the type of childcare attended and the child's sex. RESULTS: Childcare type or child's sex did not moderate associations between MDS and children's cognitive outcomes except for MDS being associated with lower scores on reading achievement in first grade for girls with a very small effect size (sr2 = .003). Childcare attendance was associated with higher scores for children's cognitive development, however these associations disappeared after adjusting for covariates including child, mother and family characteristics. Regardless of MDS and childcare type, boys had, even after adjusting for covariates, lower scores on academic readiness (sr2 = .029) and higher scores on mathematics achievement (sr2 = .004). CONCLUSIONS: Children's cognitive development at school entry was more strongly associated with maternal education, children's age in kindergarten and number of months of schooling in first grade than MDS. Contrary to associations between MDS and child behavior problems, childcare attendance did not moderate associations between MDS and children's cognitive development at school entry.

Maternal depression symptoms, child behavior problems, and their transactional relations: Probing the role of formal childcare.

Among children exposed to elevated maternal depression symptoms (MDS), recent studies have demonstrated reduced internalizing and externalizing problems for those who have attended formal childcare (i.e., center-based, family-based childcare). However, these studies did not consider whether childcare attendance is associated with benefits for the child only or also with reduced MDS. Using a four-wave longitudinal cross-lagged model, we evaluated whether formal childcare attendance was associated with MDS or child behavior problems and whether it moderated longitudinal associations between MDS and child behavior problems and between child behavior problems and MDS. The sample was drawn from a population-based cohort study and consisted of 908 biologically related mother-child dyads, followed from 5 months to 5 years. Attending formal childcare was not associated with MDS or child behavior problems but moderated the association between MDS at 3.5 years and child internalizing and externalizing problems at 5 years as well as between girls' externalizing problems at 3.5 years and MDS at 5 years. No other moderation of formal childcare was found. Findings suggest that attending formal childcare reduces the risks of behavior problems in the context of MDS but also the risk of MDS in the context of girls' externalizing problems.

Marital quality and inflammation: The moderating role of early life adversity.

OBJECTIVE: Although positive marital quality is usually associated with lower chronic low-grade inflammation, not everyone benefits equally from spousal support. Exposure to early life adversity (ELA) has been proposed as a factor that may impede the social buffering effect of positive social relationships. The goal of this study was to test whether ELA would moderate the impact of marital quality on inflammation. METHOD: This cross-sectional study examined 168 partnered middle-aged women who either were experiencing a current chronic caregiving stressor, raising an adolescent with an autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability, or who had the normative parenting experience of raising a typically developing adolescent. Participants completed self-report questionnaires on marital satisfaction, dyadic coping, and perceived partner responsiveness to create a composite index of marital quality, and they filled out the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire to assess ELA exposure. Participants also provided plasma samples for the assessment of interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and C-reactive protein, three circulating biomarkers of inflammation. RESULTS: ELA moderated the association between marital quality and inflammation. Among individuals who endorsed lower ELA exposure, there was a significant, negative association between marital quality and interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-α levels. However, this association was attenuated and not statistically significant among participants who reported higher ELA exposure. This effect was independent of current chronic stress. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that ELA may impair the social buffering effect of marital quality on inflammation. This impaired social buffering effect may be another mechanism through which ELA promotes sustained elevations in inflammation over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Dyadic coping and inflammation in the context of chronic stress.

OBJECTIVE: Marital quality impacts inflammatory processes. Dyadic coping, a spousal support process in which members of a couple work together to cope with the stressors that 1 or both partners are facing, is associated with higher marital satisfaction and reduced psychological distress. The goal of the present study was to evaluate whether dyadic coping is also related to systemic inflammation among individuals facing chronic parenting stress. METHOD: Forty-four parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder completed self-report questionnaires on dyadic coping, marital satisfaction, perceived social support, and caregiving burden. They also provided a blood sample for C-reactive protein (CRP) analysis, a marker of systemic inflammation. RESULTS: Higher positive dyadic coping was significantly associated with lower circulating CRP, while negative dyadic coping was unrelated to CRP. After adjusting for individual differences in marital satisfaction, perceived social support, and caregiving burden, positive dyadic coping became marginally associated with CRP. CONCLUSION: Positive dyadic coping is a specific interpersonal process that may modulate systemic inflammation among individuals exposed to chronic stress. (PsycINFO Database Record