Maternal Psychological Control, Use of Supportive Parenting, and Childhood Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

Given the developmental importance of the family system, research on child depressive symptoms often examines the impact of parenting practices as either sources of or buffers against depressive symptoms. The current study, operating from a stress-process framework, examined the interactive effects of supportive parenting practices (i.e., mothers' use of positive communication, positive parenting, and parental involvement) and maternal psychological control on mother-and child-reported child depressive symptoms in a community-recruited sample of 9-12 year-olds. Discrepancies between mother-and child-reports of depressive symptoms were also examined. Maternal psychological control was uniquely associated with child-, not mother-, reported depressive symptoms. Parental involvement was uniquely associated with mother-, not child-, reported depressive symptoms. Positive parent-child communication was associated with less child-and mother-reported child depressive symptoms at the bivariate level, but not when unique associations were examined. Positive parenting was unrelated to either report of depressive symptoms. No interaction effects were detected.Implications and future directions are discussed.

Parent–child communication and self‐esteem mediate the relationship between interparental conflict and children's depressive symptoms

“…Grych () showed that parents might cope with marital conflict by reducing the frequency of communication and expressing more negative emotions towards their children. Such ineffective communication is a risk factor for psychological and behavioural problems (Cheung, Cummings, Zhang, & Davies, ; Fang, Dai, Fang, & Deng, ; Frazer & Fite, ; Hartos & Power, ; Su, Li, Lin, Xu, & Zhu, ). Specifically, a study of 1016 migrant children and 446 urban children in China showed that compared with urban children, migrant children exhibited lower quality communication with their parents (lower frequency, fewer child‐initiated conversations), which was linked to migrant children's poorer mental health (Chen & Liu, ).…”

“…For example, a recent study of 568 migrant children (8 to 17 years old) showed that the prevalence rate of depression was 20.1% (Guo et al, ). Given that children with depression are more likely to have poorer psychosocial outcomes such as academic problems, interpersonal conflict, substance abuse, suicide risk, conduct problems, and even impaired physical development (Frazer & Fite, ; Garber, Gallerani, & Franke, ), it is important to understand the risk factors for depression among migrant children.…”

Anger Inhibition Moderates the Link Between Parental Psychological Control and Peer Victimization

“…Work by Barber (1996;Barber et al, 2012) has provided evidence supporting the cross-sample reliability and predictive validity (with regard to a range of youth problem behaviors) of the PCS. The 10-item version has been used in previous research (Frazer & Fite, 2016). In the current sample, this measure demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .78).…”

Children's effortful control moderates the relationship between parental psychological control and adolescents’ depressive symptoms

“…Studies on psychological control that have been conducted with adolescents have shown that psychological control has similar negative consequences for adolescents' functioning during all age stages of adolescence (e.g., Barber, Stolz, & Olsen, 2005;Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2005). Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have found that adolescents who experienced high levels of parental psychological control show more depressive symptoms (Barber, 1996;Barber et al, 2005;Frazer & Fite, 2016;Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2005). For example, Bireda and Krosigk (2015) reported that parents' psychological control was positively and significantly related to adolescents' depression level.…”