MUTUAL MOTHER-CHILD INFLUENCES IN FAMILIES WITH AND WITHOUT AFFECTIVE DISORDER

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Processes of mutual interpersonal influence are studied in dyads comprised of well and depressed mothers and their 5-year-old children, in a longitudinal design. (ZO1 MH-02144). The study is focused on difficulties of depressed mothers in controlling their children, and on the development of children's competent interpersonal responses to control. Two major research questions are addressed: What is the relation between the mother's psychopathology and the processes of interpersonal influence between mother and child, and what are the developmental changes from the time the child was two to when s/he was five years of age? The focus is on bilateral interpersonal control within mother-child dyads. Multiple sources of data are used, including parental self-reports of rearing philosophies, and their actual control behaviors. These bilateral influence processes are studied by analyzing every episode of control, initiated either by the mother or by the child, during naturalistic interaction. Earlier findings, that daughters of depressed mothers were more noncompliant, were also replicated at five years. Several difficulties and maladaptations were identified in depressed mothers. Above all, the depressed mothers, compared to normal, had difficulty making subtle adaptations to changing developmental tasks and conditions in the child. They were, more than normal mothers, influenced by immediate situational and affective factors, and had difficulty maintaining long-term perspectives and long-term rearing goals. However, in both groups robust developmental changes in maternal strategies, as well as in children's responses, were identified. More evidence was also found regarding adaptive and maladaptive response style, as well as maternal strategies of influence.