Parental Postpartum Depression and Children’s Socioemotional Development: The Role of Socioeconomic Inequality

Parental postpartum depression (PPD) is a documented risk factor for mental health problems in childhood, but little is known about its interplay with family socioeconomic status (SES). This study tested the interactive effect of SES in the associations of PPD with mental health symptoms in children from infancy to adolescence. Data used for this study were from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. Data included self-reported maternal and paternal depressive symptoms at 5 months postpartum, using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Parents, teachers, and children/adolescents reported internalizing/externalizing symptoms in children/adolescents using the Social Behavior Questionnaire (ages 3.5-13 years) and the Mental Health and Social Inadaptation Assessment for Adolescents (ages 15-17 years). Mothers reported SES at baseline. Cross-classified 3-level mixed effects modeling was used to test associations. After excluding 168 single-parent families, the sample consisted of 1,899 families with usable data. Of these, 314 (16.5%) families reported maternal PPD, and 151 (8.0%) reported paternal PPD. Family SES moderated the association between PPD in both parents and mental health symptoms in children. In low SES families, paternal PDD (β = .27, 95% CI 0.10-0.45, p = .003) and maternal PPD (β = .38, 95% CI 0.25-0.50, p < .001) were associated with greater child mental health problems in children, whereas this was the case only for maternal PPD in average or high SES families (β = 0.20, 95% CI 0.10-0.29, p < .001). PPD in both parents increases the risk of mental health problems in children, with a greater effect in low SES families.