The name is absent

Characteristics of the family

may lead to less responsive parent-child interactions and other forms of poor or
impaired parenting behaviour (McLoyd, 1990; McLoyd & Wilson, 1991).

Parents’ ability to cope with emotional stress, financial and economic pressures and
additional social stressors are known to influence the performance and attainments of
children, both directly through living in a more stressful environment and indirectly
through negative impacts on parenting and diminished parent-child relations. For
example, proximal family processes such as rewarding, explaining, consulting and
negotiating with children require patience and concentration, qualities typically in
short supply when parents feel harassed and overburdened.

Even when stressful life events occur in the context of otherwise low risk families
they can have a deleterious effect on parent-child interaction. Elder (Elder & Ardelt,
1992; Elder et al., 1995) suggests that increased numbers of social and environmental
risks forces parents to adopt less effective parenting styles. High stress levels may
prevent parents’ from efficiently adapting their parenting strategies to the
developmental changes in their children’s needs. For example, parents may be over
controlling or, at the other end of the scale, too detached and/or permissive (for
example Lempers et al., 1989).

A number of recent studies have also identified specific implications of maternal
depression for longer-term difficulties in infant development. Infants between 12 and
21 months have shown a range of adverse outcomes including behaviour problems
(Murray, 1992), cognitive impairments (Lyons-Ruth et al., 1986; Murray, 1992)
particularly in boys (Murray et al., 1996), interaction difficulties (Stein et al., 1991)
and insecurity of attachment (Hipwell et al., 2000; Lyons-Ruth et al., 1986; Murray,
1992; Teti et al., 1995).

These adverse developmental outcomes have been observed in infants even in cases
where mothers’ depressive symptoms have remitted (e.g. (Murray, 1992; Murray et
al., 1996; Stein et al., 1991) suggesting that poor outcomes can have origins in
mother-child interactions from as early as two months postpartum (Murray et al.,
1996). The authors suggest here that it is possible that despite the mother’s recovery
from depression, early negative attitudes to the infant may set up a cycle of
particularly marked difficulties that come to influence later child behaviours. This
view is consistent with other research (e.g. (Bendell et al., 1994; Field et al. 1993)
which reports that depressed mothers’ early perceptions of their infants tend to be
more negative than those of independent observers and to show considerable
continuity throughout the pre-school years. This re-emphasises the fact that
characteristics interact with each other. Here postnatal depression interacts with
maternal attitudes, both of which affect child outcomes, mediated by mother-child
interactions.

It is also interesting to note that fathers may buffer the negative effects of maternal
depression on their children. Hossain et al. (1995) found that infants’ interactions with
their non-depressed fathers were more positive than they were with their depressed

58

<<   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>

More intriguing information