Maternal state of mind regarding attachment, maternal depression and children's family drawings in the early school years

Irene Fihrer, Cathy McMahon*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    24 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The current study explored how children's family drawings in the early school years might be related to their exposure to recurrent episodes of maternal depression. We also examined prospectively relations among maternal state of mind regarding attachment derived from the Adult Attachment Interview and earlier mother-child attachment from the Strange Situation Procedure (both measured when the child was 12-15 months old) and later family drawings. Seventy-five mothers were assessed for symptoms of depression periodically between birth and child age 6-8 years. At this age, children completed a family drawing rated using an attachment-based scoring system. Both mothers' state of mind regarding attachment and their overall depression were modestly, but significantly, correlated with a global rating of the child's drawings. When both predictors were considered together, however, neither was significant, reflecting collinearity between the two variables. In this study, women with a nonautonomous state of mind regarding attachment were significantly more likely to experience recurrent depression. The earlier classification of the child's attachment to the mother from the Strange Situation Procedure was not related to the family drawing.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)537-556
    Number of pages20
    JournalAttachment and Human Development
    Volume11
    Issue number6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Nov 2009

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