Association between maternal depression and maternal sensitivity from birth to 12 months: a meta-analysis
2018
ABSTRACTMaternal sensitivity plays a central role in shaping children’s development across a number of domains, and may be disrupted by depression. The current meta-analysis quantified the magnitude of the association between depression and maternal sensitivity, defined broadly as timely, contingent, and appropriate responding to infants’ cues, from birth to 12 months. Across k = 48 studies and n = 4,934 mother–infant dyads, the aggregate effect size between depression and maternal sensitivity was r = −.16, p < .0001, indicating that mothers with higher depression levels were less sensitive than mothers with lower depression levels. Studies that compared a depressed group with a nondepressed/control group had larger effect sizes (r = −.35, p < .0001) than studies that examined depression within a single sample of either unselected cases or clinical-only cases (r = −.11, p < .001), suggesting that clinical levels of depression may pose a particular threat to sensitive parenting. Clinical implications (e.g....
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
112
References
62
Citations
NaN
KQI