Abstract
There is evidence that maternal depression can disrupt adolescent social development and trigger a risk cascade to adolescent substance use that involves poor quality mother–child relationships (Lovejoy et al., 2000) and affiliation with deviant peers (Visser et al., 2012). However, relatively little work has considered maternal depression as a catalyst for this risk pathway to adolescent substance use. The current study aims to clarify whether maternal depression has cascading effects to adolescent substance use through related developmental systems. Using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping for testing indirect effects, we tested the prospective association between maternal depression and middle adolescent substance use and whether poor mother–child relationship quality and peer deviancy mediated this relationship. We controlled for a variety of important cofounding variables. The sample included N = 338 adolescents (57% female; predominantly non-Hispanic Caucasian (83.14%) or African American (8.88%)) and mothers drawn from a larger nine-year longitudinal study of adolescent substance use. Data from wave 1 through wave 6 of the longitudinal project were utilized. The average age of adolescents was 11.6, 12.6, 13.6, 14.6, 15.5, and 16.6 at W1-W6, respectively. The indirect effect from maternal depression to substance use was supported (ab = 0.03, 95% CI [0.002, 0.07]). Findings emphasize that future work should more closely examine how maternal depression operates in developmental cascade models of adolescent substance use.
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Data Statement
The data and codebooks for this project are publicly available at Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
Notes
We also tested a model using maternal minority status as a covariate instead of adolescent minority status. Consistent with results from the primary model using adolescent minority status, maternal minority status was not significantly associated with our proposed mediators (mother–child relationship quality and W2-3 peer deviancy), and the hypothesized indirect effect from maternal depression to middle adolescent SU through mother–child relationship quality and peer deviancy was still supported (ab = 0.03, 95% CI [0.002, 0.07]).
To examine the possibility that maternal SU was confounding hypothesized associations, we tested a model in which adolescent SU at W2-3 and W4-6 was regressed on maternal SU at W1. The associations were nonsignificant, and the hypothesized indirect effect from maternal depression to middle adolescent SU through mother–child relationship quality and peer deviancy was still supported (ab = 0.03, 95% CI [0.002, 0.07]).
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This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA019631) awarded to Craig R. Colder and a grant from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (F31AA028973) awarded to Katie J. Paige. The funding sources had no involvement in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of the data, nor in the writing and submission of the current manuscript. The authors thank the families and children for their gracious participation in this work.
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Each author has contributed significantly to the work. All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data analysis was performed by Katie Paige. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Katie Paige and Nolan Ramer, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Paige, K.J., Ramer, N.E. & Colder, C.R. Developmental Cascade Effects of Maternal Depression on Offspring Substance Use Across Adolescence: Pathway Through Mother–Child Relationship Quality and Peer Deviancy. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 50, 933–944 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00893-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00893-y