Parental Childhood Adversity, Depressive Symptoms, and Parenting Quality: Effects on Toddler Self-Regulation in Child Welfare Services-Involved Families

This paper tests the relationship between maternal depression, parental quality, and child outcomes. It finds that experiencing adversity as a child is a factor in current maternal depression, which in turn affects parental engagement and sensitivity to children’s distress, but not non-distress. Thus, different interventions should be used for mothers who have experienced trauma depending on whether the goal is identifying and responding to distress signals or increasing parental sensitivity to their children overall.