Maternal depressive symptoms and language development: The moderating role of child temperament.

Abstract

The current study examined the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child temperament in predicting subsequent child language skills. Participants were 252 mother-child dyads recruited from the All Our Families longitudinal cohort, a primarily middle-class sample (62.9% completed postsecondary education) from Alberta, Canada (90.5% White, 6% Asian, 3.5% other). Maternal depressive symptoms at age 3, controlling for prenatal depressive symptoms, did not evidence a direct effect on child language skills at age 5 (49.6% males; mean [M] = 5.12 years old, standard deviation [SD] = .11). However, both child surgency and effortful control interacted with maternal depression at age 3 to predict later language skills. Low effortful control was a risk factor for poorer language abilities in contexts of high maternal depressive symptoms. High child surgency emerged as a differential susceptibility marker, predicting poorer language skills in contexts of high maternal depressive symptoms but better language skills in contexts of low depressive symptoms. Negative affect did not interact with maternal depressive symptoms in predicting language skills. These findings highlight the complex interaction between maternal and child characteristics in predicting language development during a developmental period in which language skills are a prime indicator of school readiness and a predictor of future academic achievement and socioemotional adjustment.

Association between maternal sensitivity and child receptive language development: Quasi-causal evidence using a sibling comparison design.

“…Although we included within-family covariates in our models (i.e., child age, sex at birth, birth order), it is important to acknowledge that our list of covariates was not exhaustive. It would have been interesting, for example, to examine child temperament as a covariate given that in single-dyad studies certain temperament traits are considered risk factors for poor language in the context of environmental adversity (e.g., low caregiver sensitivity; Hentges, Madigan, et al, 2021).…”

Maternal Stress and Newborn Behavior, Maternal Depression and Newborn Cognition

“…Maternal depression is recognized as a contributing factor to the socioemotional and cognitive development risk in children (Hentges et al, 2021). Numerous research studies have shown that maternal depression during pregnancy and the postpartum period can have significant and lasting effects on children's development (Lefkovics et al, 2014).…”