The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown have dramatically impacted families’ life, raising serious concerns about children’s emotional wellbeing. However, few studies have investigated whether the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on psychological adjustment in youngest can be moderated by maternal mood and, to our knowledge, none of them has adopted a longitudinal design. The main aim of the current study was to explore if the intensity and directionality of maternal mood symptoms moderated the trajectory of emotional and behavioural problems in Italian pre-schoolers from pre- to during the lockdown adopting a longitudinal design. To assess maternal anxiety and depression symptoms, the EPDS and the STAI-Y were filled in by 94 and 88 women before the lockdown, when their children were 1 (Wave P1) and 3 years old (Wave P2), respectively, and by 74 women during the lockdown, when their children were 4 years old (Wave L). Mothers also filled in the CBCL/1 ½–5 to assess their children’s emotional and behavioural problems at each assessment wave. As a whole, children’s emotional and behavioural problems significantly increased from pre- to during the lockdown. Furthermore, maternal mood moderated this trajectory. In particular, greater maternal mood symptoms were significantly associated with a greater increase in emotional reactive, anxious-depressed, withdrawn and aggressive symptoms during the lockdown. These results contribute to shed light on the role played by maternal emotional wellbeing in buffering the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on children’s behavioural development. Albeit preliminary, the current findings highlight the need to provide timely psychological interventions to distressed mothers to help their children to better cope with the effects of the pandemic. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00787-021-01925-0.

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Antenatal exposure to maternal stress is a factor that may impact on offspring cognitive development. While some evidence exists of an association between maternal antenatal depressive or anxiety symptoms and infants' cognitive outcomes, less is known about the role of biological indices of maternal antenatal stress in relation to infant cognitive development. The current study investigated the association between maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms, stress and inflammatory markers during pregnancy and infant's cognitive development in a sample of 104 healthy pregnant women (mean gestational age = 34.76; SD = 1.12) and their 12-week-old infants (mean postnatal weeks = 11.96; SD = 1.85). Maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were evaluated during pregnancy, alongside measurements of serum Interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-Reactive Protein (CRP), salivary cortisol, and alpha amylase (sAA) concentrations. Infant cognitive development, maternal caregiving and concurrent anxiety or depressive symptoms were assessed 12 weeks after delivery. Hierarchical linear regressions indicated that higher maternal diurnal cortisol and CRP levels were independently associated with lower infant cognitive development scores, while adjusting for infant gender and gestational age, maternal IQ, caregiving, depressive, or anxiety symptoms. Though correlational, findings seem suggestive of a role for variation in maternal biological stress signals during pregnancy in influencing infants' early cognitive development.