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Parents’ mental health and children’s cognitive and social development

Families in England in the Millennium Cohort Study

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Abstract

Background

The development of children of parents who are experiencing mental health difficulties is a continuing cause of concern for professionals working in health, social care and education as well as policy makers. In light of this interest our study investigates the interplay between the mental health of mothers and fathers and family socioeconomic resources, and the impact for children’s cognitive and social development.

Methods

The study uses survey data from the Millennium Cohort Study linked with the Foundation Stage Profile assessment for children in the primary year of school in England between 2005 and 2006. The study includes 4,781 families from England where both parents’ mental health had been assessed using the Kessler 6 scale. Associations between parents’ mental health and children’s cognitive and social development were estimated using regression models. Multivariate models were used to explore the mediating role of the families’ socioeconomic resources. Gender interaction models were used to explore whether effects of parents’ mental health differ for girls and boys.

Results

The study finds lower attainment in communication, language and literacy, mathematical development and personal, social and emotional development among children whose parents were experiencing high levels of psychological distress. Parents’ age and qualifications and families’ socioeconomic resources strongly mediated the effects of parents’ psychological distress on children’s attainment, and although independent effects of mother’s mental health were maintained, effects of father’s mental health were not. Stronger effects of mothers’ mental health were found for boys than for girls.

Conclusions

These findings highlight the interplay between the mental health of parents, families’ socioeconomic resources and children’s development which speaks for the need for close integration of mental health and social interventions to improve the well being of families.

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Notes

  1. Tobit regression is a model devised by Tobin [53] in which it is assumed that the dependent variable has a number of its values clustered at a limiting value, thus the data may be considered to be censored at this limiting value. The estimates obtained from Tobit regression are improved compared to those which would be obtained using an ordinary least squares regression as the censoring in the data is taken in to account. In the case of this study the limiting value is 100 representing children who were working beyond the levels of the goals included in the assessment. For CLL 4.1% of children in the sample analysed were scored at 100, for MATH 6.0% of children and for PSE 10.2% of children.

  2. The Tobit regression model estimates coefficients which represent the difference in the score attained by children in a particular category compared to children in the reference group, for example the difference between children whose mothers experienced high levels of psychological distress (7–24 points on the Kessler scale) and those experiencing very low levels (0–3 points on the Kessler scale). The model additionally estimates the standard error of the coefficients and the P value indicating the statistical significance of the coefficients. The constant term estimates the score for children in the reference group, and sigma estimates the standard error of the regression. The R 2 statistic is estimated as the square of the correlation between the observed scores and the scores predicted by the model, this may be interpreted as the proportion of the variability in the scores which is predicted by the model [55].

  3. A gender interaction test involves including an additional term within the model which estimates the difference between the coefficients estimated for boys and for girls when these are estimated separately. For the measures of parents’ mental health, terms were included in the model which reflected the difference in the coefficient for girls and boys for each of the two categories compared to the reference group. The combined statistical significance of these terms was assessed using the Wald test which calculates a P value from which it may be determined whether there is evidence for a gender interaction [54].

Abbreviations

MCS:

Millennium cohort study

FSP:

Foundation stage profile

CLL:

Communication, language and literacy

MATH:

Mathematical development

PSE:

Personal, social and emotional development

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the ESRC Gender Equality Network for funding this project and the ESRC Data Archive for supplying the Millennium Cohort Data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK

    Fiona K. Mensah & Kathleen E. Kiernan

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  1. Fiona K. Mensah
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  2. Kathleen E. Kiernan
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Correspondence to Kathleen E. Kiernan.

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Mensah, F.K., Kiernan, K.E. Parents’ mental health and children’s cognitive and social development. Soc Psychiat Epidemiol 45, 1023–1035 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-009-0137-y

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