A Short-Term Longitudinal Study on the Reciprocal Relations between Mothers’ Depression and Their Preschoolers’ Emotional Problems

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This study examined the causal relationship between a mothers' depression and the emotional problems of their preschool-aged children as indicated by anxiety, depression and emotional reactivity. We analyzed data from 1,528 mothers and their children from the Panel Study of Korean Children (PSKC) collected when the children were 4 years old and 5 years old. Autoregressive cross-lagged modeling was conducted using AMOS ver. 23.0 to investigate the longitudinal reciprocal effects between mothers' depression and children's emotional problems. The results indicated that both mothers' depression and children's emotional problems were relatively stable between the ages of 4 to 5. There were significant cross-lagged effects from the mothers' depression to children's emotional problems and from children's emotional problems to mothers' depression. Mothers reported higher levels of depression when the children were 4 years old and the children showed more anxiety, depression and emotional reactivity when they were 5 years old. Emotional problems when the children were 4 predicted greater depression among mothers 1 year later. We also examined the group difference (between boys and girls) in the study model. Gender differences were not statistically supported. The results suggested that early assessment and intervention for mothers' depression and children's emotional problems are essential for a healthy mother-child relationship and later child outcomes.