Role of parenting practices, mother's personality and depressive symptoms in early child development

Abstract

In this study we explore the possibility that maternal depressive symptomatology and personality would influence parenting practices which would in turn influence their offspring's socio-emotional and cognitive-motor development. We used a large representative sample of Uruguayan children and their mothers. The Big Five Inventory (BFI), subscales of the Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME), Ages & Stages Questionnaires - third edition (n = 3596), Child Behavior Checklist (n = 3750), and a sociodemographic (SES) questionnaire were administered. We found that favorable scores in child development measures were correlated with maternal openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, low neuroticism, depressive symptomatology, positive parenting practices and high income households. We then elaborated pathway models that allowed us to account for covariance between relevant variables. We found that openness was indirectly associated with aspects of both socioemotional and cognitive motor development via parenting practices and maternal depressive symptomatology. The association between SES and both child development outcomes was fully explained by intermediary variables. Collectively, our results provide support for Belsky's model of child development and can be used by professionals to better target interventions geared at infants and young children and their mothers.

Keywords: Early childhood; Maternal depression; Maternal personality; Parenting practices; Socioeconomic status.