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Like mother like daughter, like father like son? Intergenerational transmission of internalizing symptoms at early school age: a longitudinal study

European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry volume 27, pages 985–995 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Despite the well-established link between parental depressive symptoms and children’s internalizing symptoms, studies that divide transmission into gender-specific components remain scarce. Therefore, the present study focused on gender-specific associations between internalizing symptoms of parents and children over the course of early school age, a key stage where gender-specific roles are increasingly adopted. Participants were 272 children (49.6% girls) oversampled for internalizing symptoms. Parents completed questionnaires twice during early school age (mean age time 1 = 7.4 years; SD = 0.24; mean age time 2 = 8.5 years; SD = 0.28). Mothers and fathers separately reported on their own depressive symptoms and their child’s internalizing symptoms. Latent multiple group analyses indicated gender-independent stability as well as gender-specific relations between parental and child outcomes. Maternal depressive symptoms were concurrently associated with symptoms of girls and boys, while paternal symptoms were concurrently associated only with symptoms of boys, but not of girls. Moreover, the associations between children and the parent of the same gender became more relevant over time, suggesting a growing identification with the same-gender model, particularly for fathers and boys. In regard to prospective effects, girls’ internalizing symptoms at age 7 predicted paternal depressive symptoms 1 year later. In a rigorous longitudinal design, this study underscores the importance of gender specificity in the associations of internalizing symptoms between children and their mothers and fathers after controlling for symptom stability over time. The study also raises the interesting possibility that girls’ internalizing symptoms elicit similar symptoms in their fathers.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. A parcel is an indicator of the latent factor that is defined as the mean (or sum) of two or more individual items [39].

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Grants of the German Research Foundation (DFG) to Kai von Klitzing and Annette M. Klein (Grants KL 2315/1-1, KL2315/1-2 and KL2338/1-2), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant 01KR1201A). The authors would like to thank the Public Health Department of the City of Leipzig for cooperating in this study, as well as all families for taking part.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, University of Leipzig, Liebigstrasse 20a, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Anna Andreas, Lars O. White, Susan Sierau, Kai von Klitzing & Annette M. Klein

  2. University of Konstanz, Constance, Germany

    Sonja Perren

  3. Thurgau University of Teacher Education, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland

    Sonja Perren

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  1. Anna Andreas
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  2. Lars O. White
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  3. Susan Sierau
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Correspondence to Anna Andreas.

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Research involving human participants and/or animals

The presented study was approved by the institutional review board of the Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig and has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Participation in the study was voluntary and all parents gave written informed consent prior to the inclusion in the study. Moreover, the child’s oral assent was obtained.

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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Andreas, A., White, L.O., Sierau, S. et al. Like mother like daughter, like father like son? Intergenerational transmission of internalizing symptoms at early school age: a longitudinal study. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 27, 985–995 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-017-1103-y

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Keywords

  • Gender differences
  • Intergenerational transmission
  • Parental depressive symptoms
  • Internalizing symptoms
  • Early school age
  • Same-gender effects