Family Poverty, Maternal Depression, Family Status and Childrens emotional wellbeing

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Family Poverty, Maternal Depression, Family
Status and Childrens emotional well-being

• Kathleen Kiernan
• and
• Fiona Mensah
• Department of Social Policy and Social Work

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Emotional well-being in families

• Increased risk of emotional and behavioural
  difficulties in children of depressed parents
• Proposed mechanisms
• Transmission of genetic susceptibility
• Quality of parent child relationships
• Familial cohesion and interactions
• Co-occurrence of other adversities
• Two way relationship between child and parents
  behaviour and psychological well being

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Family resources

• Relationship between socioeconomic resources and
  childrens cognitive and behavioural development
• Proposed mechanisms
• Transmission of biological endowments
• Parental psychological well being
• Parenting behaviours
• Support for early development and learning
• Quality of the home environment
• Association with family structure and parental
  age

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Diversity of family environment

• Increased frequency of behavioural difficulties -
  children in lone-parent and step families
• Relationship between lone parenthood,
  socioeconomic adversity and mental illness
• Attenuation of effects by socioeconomic and other
  characteristics of the families (children aged 4)
  ALSPAC
• Persistence of effects for step families but not
  lone mothers (children aged 4-15) 1997 Annual
  Health Survey of England

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Millennium Cohort Study

• 18553 Families 18819 Children
• Born in 2001-2
• Families interviewed when baby 9 months old and
  age 3 years
• Over-representation
• Children in disadvantaged areas
• Ethnic minority communities
• Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• Follow-ups at age 5, and 7 year old planned

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Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire

• Hyperactivity
• Conduct Problems
• Emotional Symptoms
• Peer Relationships
• Total Difficulties Score score of 17 and above
  high
• MCS 7.2 of the sample
• Prosocial Behaviour

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Extent of Poverty and Maternal Depression

• 27 living in poverty
• Poverty defined as 60 per cent of the national
  median income before housing costs
• Maternal Depression
• During the last 30 days, about how often did you
  feel so depressed that nothing could cheer you
  up?
• All or most of the time 12
• Some of the time 24
• A little or none of the time 65

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Level of maternal depression by poverty
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Family type at age 3
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Family settings and in poverty
Millennium Cohort Study 2003-4
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Level of maternal depression by family setting
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Variables

• Outcome High Total Difficulty Score
• Focal variables Poverty - Maternal Depression
  - Family Context
• Demographics gender, ethnicity, educational
  attainment, mothers age at first birth, family
  size

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of children with high SDScores
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of children with high SD scores at age 3
according to family poverty and maternal
depression
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Family settings and of children with high
difficulty scores
Millennium Cohort Study 2003-4
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with high difficulty scores (1)

• Males 8 Females 6
• Ethnicity - Mothers
• White 6
• Mixed 10
• Indian 10
• Pakistani/Bangladeshi 22
• Black 7
• Other 7

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with high difficulty scores (2)

• Maternal Qualifications
• None 20
• Medium 8
• High 3
• Mothers age at first birth
• Under 20 19
• 20-24 15
• 25-29 7
• 30 and older 4
• Number of children
• One 7
• Two 6
• Three 8
• Four or more 11

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Findings Poverty and childs emotional well-being

• Odds ratios
  
• Binary 4.0
• Add Depression 3.1
• Add Family Status 2.7
  
• Add all demographics 1.7
• All Significant at least plt0.001

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Findings Maternal Depression and childs
emotional well-being

• Odds ratios
  
• Med
  High
• Binary 2.8 6.8
• Add Poverty 2.3 5.4
• Add Family Status 2.6 5.5
• Add all demographi 2.2 4.3
• All significant at least p lt0.001

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Findings Family Status and childs emotional
well-being

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Limitations

• Information self-reported by mothers
• Crude measures of depression
• Cross sectional information

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Next Stages in this analysis
Socioeconomic resources
Emotional well-being
Parenting behaviour Parent child
relations Discipline Engagement
Mental health