Parental Depression and Anxiety and Early Childhood Behavior Problems Across Family Types

Using the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, we examine the association between parental major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders and child behavior problems across family types: married, cohabiting, involved nonresident father, and noninvolved nonresident father. Among 3-year-olds in all families, maternal anxiety/depression is associated with increased odds of anxious/depressed, attention deficit, and oppositional defiant disorders (N = 2,120). Paternal anxiety/depression has no significant association with these problem behaviors; father's illness, however, exacerbates anxious/depressed behaviors in young children if both parents are ill and he is coresident. The findings underscore the importance of maternal mental health for child well-being and suggest that a negative interaction between parent illnesses is most likely when parents and children share the same disorder. Key Words: behavior problems, family structure, fathers, Fragile Families, parents' mental health. The link between parental mental health and child well-being is of great interest to researchers. Children with a mentally ill parent are expected to exhibit more problems than those with two healthy parents because of both the genetic transmission and the disruption of family life associated with such illnesses (Phares, Duhig, & Watson, 2002). The presence of an ill mother or father is related to disturbed emotional and social development in young children, including higher rates of internalizing (e.g., depression and anxiety) and externalizing (e.g., conduct disorder) behaviors (Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2003; Ramchandani, Stein, Evans, & O'Connor, 2005), increased rates of psychopathology as adolescents, especially major depressive disorder (Beardslee, Versage, & Gladstone, 1998), and continued increased risk of psychopathology as an adult (Downey & Coyne, 1990). Researchers have also examined the effect of dual-parent morbidity to determine whether one parent's health matters more than the other's, whether two ill parents produce additive or multiplicative effects, and whether a healthy parent can buffer a child from an unhealthy parent. These studies suggest that maternal mental illness is more detrimental than paternal illness, having two ill parents is worse than having one ill parent, and the presence of one healthy parent can buffer a child from an unhealthy parent (Beardslee et al.). Most existing research on the association between parents' mental health and child outcomes relies on homogenous samples of married parents, including convenience samples and twin pairs. Nontraditional families, such as cohabiting couples or parents living in separate households, are typically not included in these analyses. Yet the risks associated with parental mental illness are likely to be greater for children raised in nontraditional families (Carlson & Corcoran, 2001), in part because these family types are already disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic states (SES) and union stability. On average, single mothers have access to fewer parenting resources (less time and money) than married mothers (McLanahan & Teitler, 1999). Also, adults who suffer from a mental illness have higher rates of union dissolution than those who are healthy, translating into a greater prevalence of parent mental illness in nontraditional families (Deklyen, Brooks-Gunn, McLanahan, & Knab, 2006; Wade & Pevalin, 2004). Moreover, because of matching theory and the phenomenon of assortative mating - people marry or partner with others like themselves - children in nontraditional families have an increased risk of having two mentally ill parents (McLeod, 1995). Given the recent growth of nontraditional families and the high rates of mental illness in these families, especially dual-parent psychopathology, their omission is a serious limitation of existing research. Our research addresses this shortcoming and extends the current literature in several ways. …