Understanding Bidirectional Mother-Infant Affective Displays across Contexts: Effects of Maternal Maltreatment History and Postpartum Depression and PTSD Symptoms

Abstract

Background: This study examined the bidirectional nature of mother-infant positive and negative emotional displays during social interactions across multiple tasks among postpartum women accounting for childhood maltreatment severity. Additionally, effects of maternal postpartum psychopathology on maternal affect and effects of task and emotional valence on dyadic emotional displays were evaluated. Sampling and Methods: A total of 192 mother-infant dyads (51% male infants) were videotaped during free play and the Still-Face paradigm at 6 months postpartum. Mothers reported on trauma history and postpartum depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Reliable, masked coders scored maternal and infant positive and negative affect from the videotaped interactions. Results: Three path models evaluated whether dyadic affective displays were primarily mother driven, infant driven, or bidirectional in nature, adjusting for mothers' maltreatment severity and postpartum psychopathology. The bidirectional model had the best fit. Child maltreatment severity predicted depression and PTSD symptoms, and maternal symptoms predicted affective displays (both positive and negative), but the pattern differed for depressive symptoms compared to PTSD symptoms. Emotional valence and task altered the nature of bidirectional affective displays. Conclusions: The results add to our understanding of dyadic affective exchanges in the context of maternal risk (childhood maltreatment history, postpartum symptoms of depression and PTSD). Findings highlight postpartum depression symptoms as one mechanism of risk transmission from maternal maltreatment history to impacted parent-child interactions. Limitations include reliance on self-reported psychological symptoms and that the sample size prohibited testing of moderation analyses. Developmental and clinical implications are discussed.

Postpartum depression and resilience predict parenting sense of competence in women with childhood maltreatment history

“…Moreover, inconsistent findings may also reflect more proximal factors, including mothers’ well-being during the postpartum period. Post-partum depression, is a robust predictor of decreased parenting capacity, including diminished PSOC (Jones & Prinz, 2005; Roberts et al, 2004) and can mediate the effects of childhood abuse on a variety of parenting outcomes, including mother-child bonding and PSOC (Morelen et al, 2016; Seng et al, 2013). Parents’ assessment of their caregiving capacity, may be affected by the general negative world-view that is symptomatic of depression, and women who think of themselves as bad parents may then be likely to behave in ways that are consistent with this belief (Fitzgerald et al, 2005).…”

Perinatal depression effects: A narrative review

“…Using the still-face paradigm, infants of depressed versus non-depressed mothers displayed less negative affect during the still-face phase at 5 months, suggesting that the infants had become accustomed to their mothers' flat affect [8]. Using the same paradigm, another research group reported that the behavior of depressed mothers and infants during the still-face was bidirectional as opposed to being mother-driven or infant-driven [9].…”

“…And, they have typically not controlled for antidepressant use or therapy [27]. The studies have also varied on their interaction situations including spontaneous, stillface, double video and mother-stranger anger-joy conditions, some of which are distressing for both the mother and infant [9]. And, the coding systems for these have varied from global ratings to microanalytic coding [19].…”

Longitudinal Relations Between Childhood Maltreatment, Maltreatment-Specific Shame, and Postpartum Psychopathology

“…Despite substantial evidence implicating shame as a mechanism for post-traumatic psychopathology (e.g., depression and PTSD symptoms), we know little about postpartum women’s experience of MS shame. The importance of understanding postpartum experiences of shame is relevant not only to understanding of maternal postpartum well-being but also to maternal bonding, the quality of parenting behaviors, and infant development (Martinez-Torteya et al, 2014; Morelen, Menke, Beeghly, Rosenblum, & Muzik, 2016). Given extant data implicating shame as a mechanism through which maltreatment shapes later adjustment (Feiring & Taska, 2005; Feiring et al, 2002b), it seems particularly relevant to study MS shame during the postpartum period as a potential target for intervention.…”