By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Parental depression negatively affects fathers’ and mothers’ caregiving, material support, and nurturance, and is associated with poor health and developmental outcomes for children of all ages, including prenatally. Depressed mothers are more likely than non-depressed mothers to have poor parenting skills and to have negative interactions with their children.” – Child Trends
Clinically diagnosed depression is the most common form of mental illness, affecting over 6% of the population. In general, it involves feelings of sadness, emptiness or hopelessness, irritability or frustration, loss of interest or pleasure in most or all normal activities, sleep disturbances, tiredness and lack of energy, anxiety, agitation, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or blaming yourself for things that aren’t your responsibility, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts or suicide. Needless to say individuals with depression are miserable.
Depression does not occur in isolation. When an individual in a family is depressed it affects all of the members of the family. When it is a parent, it affects how the child is raised and what he/she experiences during the formative years. This can have long-lasting effects on the child. So, it is important to study how depression affects childrearing and the child and what are the factors that might mitigate or eliminate the effects of parental depression on the child.
A characteristic of western society is that many people don’t seem to like themselves. The term used to describe this that I prefer is self-dislike. This is often highly associated with depression. Its opposite is self-compassion; being kind and understanding toward yourself in the face of inadequacies or short-comings. So, it would make sense to investigate the relationship of self-compassion with depression and child rearing. In today’s Research News article “Self-Compassion and Parenting in Mothers and Fathers with Depression.” See:
or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4923280/
Psychogiou and colleagues do just that. They recruited parents of young children (2-6 years of age) who were also suffering with depression. They measured them for depression, self-compassion, parental emotions, children’s internalizing and externalizing, and parental coping with children’s negative emotions.
They found that for both mothers and fathers, low levels of depression were significantly associated with high levels of self-compassion. Parenting ability was also associated with self-compassion, with mother who were high in self-compassion expressing fewer critical comments and more positive comments toward their children. In addition, parents who were high in self-compassion had fewer distressed reactions to their children’s behavior. High parental self-compassion was also significantly associated with the children having low internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Hence, depressed parents who have high levels of self-compassion are less critical of their children, responded better to their children’s behaviors, and produced less self-blame (internalizing) in their children.
These findings suggest that self-compassion may be to some extent an antidote to depression and to mitigate the effects of that depression on parenting. It would appear that if the parent is kind and understanding toward themselves it reduces their depression level and the kindness and understanding appears to transfer to their children producing more positive and productive parenting behaviors. But, the interpretation of these findings must be tempered as the results are correlational and as such do not demonstrate causation. Future studies should attempt to manipulate self-compassion and determine the effects of increasing it on depression and parenting. Since, mindfulness practices are known to increase self-compassion and improve caregiving and parenting, it would make sense to apply mindfulness training to depressed parents and observe its effects.
So, be a better parent with self-compassion.
“We are all used to working on our self-esteem by asking ourselves, “Am I being a good parent or a bad parent?” The problem is that having high self-esteem is contingent upon experiencing success. If we don’t meet our own standards, we feel terrible about ourselves. Self-compassion, in contrast, is not a way of judging ourselves positively or negatively. It is a way of relating to ourselves kindly and embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all.” – Kristin Neff
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts
Study Summary
Psychogiou, L., Legge, K., Parry, E., Mann, J., Nath, S., Ford, T., & Kuyken, W. (2016). Self-Compassion and Parenting in Mothers and Fathers with Depression. Mindfulness, 7, 896–908. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0528-6
Abstract
Depression in parents impairs parenting and increases the risk of psychopathology among their children. Prevention and intervention could be informed by knowledge of the mechanisms that break the inter-generational transmission of psychopathology and build resilience in both parents and their children. We used data from two independent studies to examine whether higher levels of self-compassion were associated with better parenting and fewer emotional and behavioral problems in children of parents with a history of depression. Study 1 was a pilot trial of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that included 38 parents with recurrent depression. Study 2 was a longitudinal study that consisted of 160 families, including 50 mothers and 40 fathers who had a history of depression. Families were followed up approximately 16 months after the first assessment (time 2; n = 106 families). In both studies, self-compassion was assessed with the Self-Compassion Scale. Parents reporting higher levels of self-compassion were more likely to attribute the cause of their children’s behavior to external factors, were less critical, and used fewer distressed reactions to cope with their children’s emotions. Parents’ self-compassion was longitudinally associated with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, but these associations became nonsignificant after controlling for child gender, parent education, and depressive symptoms. Future larger scale and experimental designs need to examine whether interventions intended to increase self-compassion might reduce the use of negative parenting strategies and thereby the inter-generational transmission of psychopathology.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4923280/