Mother’s affection at 8 months predicts emotional distress in adulthood

[jesrdking]

Mother’s affection at 8 months predicts emotional distress in adulthood

Results that stand out to me:

“At the 8-month assessment, 10% of the sample (N=46) were characterised by a low level of mother’s affection towards the infant, 85% (N=409) were characterised as having a normal amount of affection and the remaining 6% (N=27) had mothers who were highly affectionate. Parental SES was correlated with maternal affection levels. For example, among those in the bottom quartile of the sample SES distribution, only 2% of mothers exhibited high affection levels versus 11% among those in the top quartile (p value for trend

 

[sammylove]

@jesrdking Do I need to kiss my baby 1,000 times a day or 10,000? I mean it's probably closer to 100,000 kisses a day but I want to be sure.

 

[katrina2017]

@sammylove Me all the time to my husband for the last 2 years “how can you give her just ONE goodnight kiss????” I give her like 18 on our way to the crib

 

[sanoy]

@sammylove I remember realizing that 100% I am going to be the one who has kissed my son the most and just delighting in that fact. He can have a very affectionate life partner in the future but I was getting like 100 kisses a cuddle session there in the beginning they have such a deficit to work against.

 

[sammylove]

@sanoy Ha that's so true!

 

[notloveisnotjesus]

@jesrdking Can someone who can read/understand these studies comment on whether this study had any data on whether children with low maternal affection at eight months could recover well enough not to experience emotional distress in adulthood if the mother reengaged sometime later.

… for those of us who had PPD…

 

[theonewhojesusloves]

@notloveisnotjesus Hi, I'm a clinical psychologist. This particular study didn't set out to answer that question so it doesn't provide any data around that.

There are so many complex and different factors which can lead to poor mental health. It isn't a simple formula that lower maternal affection at 8 months = later life emotional distress. If I saw a patient who told me their mum had PPD I wouldn't see that as the definite cause for them feeling unwell, I would take it as one strand of the complex and rich tapestry which is their life.

If a child has a relationship with a caregiver in which they feel safe, loved, understood, and validated that is very protective for emotional health. Maybe it takes a little longer to establish that if there's PPD in the mix, maybe those emotional needs are also met by relationships with other adults in the child's life, maybe those needs are still met by mum but she just feels crap at the time. Kids are resilient. They don't need a "#perfectparent".

Please don't see this study and take it as evidence that having PPD is harming your child. That's not the take-home here but it's the sort of negative cognitive trick that a depressed mind might use to make you feel bad about yourself.

 

[moveonupyup]

@theonewhojesusloves Thank you so much for this

 

[damacri]

@notloveisnotjesus This study actually says that the “high affection group” (27 out of 486 moms) had lower anxiety, but not that the reverse is true. The vast majority of moms in the study has “normal affection,” (n=402) which did NOT lead to higher emotional distress than the moms with “low affection” (n=46). There was no difference in between having low affection at 8 months and having normal affection. If anything, this study should actually be reassuring, since the vast majority of moms will not be “highly affectionate” anyway based on how it was defined in this study.

The study honestly isn’t that well designed because they dichotomized a continuous variable (they made groups out of a spectrum of affection). Levels of affection vary, but not in a way that can be easily chunked into low/medium/high. And, on top of that, the study had low variation among those 3 groups with very unequal group size. I would not read too much into it, but if you do, it’s still NOT saying those with low affection harmed their children, ONLY that those with high affection helped them.

 

[notazionist]

@damacri Never mind! I saw someone below posted it. Would still love to see their coding scale that they didn’t include!

 

[gizmorazaar]

@damacri That isn’t in and of itself a design flaw. It’s very common to need to convert continuous variables into discrete - there’s often no way around it. Neurotypical vs autistic or ADHD, high fat vs low fat diet, authoritarian vs authoritative vs permissive parenting, etc etc. Sometimes you have to create the categories in order to study the topic. It doesn’t invalidate the study.

The problem comes from forgetting that the variables are actually continuous, but that’s really a mistake limited to readers of the research, not the researchers themselves. If you stick with the authors’ actual conclusions you should be fine. The media often doesn’t, though, because taking the extra step is usually far more interesting.

 

[notazionist]

@damacri Did you read the full text? I don’t have access right now and am curious how they chunked them by amount of affection! Like coded number of times they said or did something affectionate? Or the quality of the affection itself?

 

[katrina2017]

@notazionist sci-hub is your friend, if you dont have access to scientific papers.

 

[notazionist]

@katrina2017 Thank you! I was so used to having institutional access —I had not heard of that!

 

[katrina2017]

@damacri

The study honestly isn’t that well designed because they dichotomized a continuous variable (they made groups out of a spectrum of affection)

smells like p-hacking to me (a bit). I guess it was not pre-registered, since it was done in 2011.

 

[tjmorton]

@notloveisnotjesus That's beyond the scope of this study. You'd need another data point (an assessment of affection at a later date) to determine whether incrrased affection later on was correlated with a change in adult scores.

Diagnosed and treated PPD is definitely better than undiagnosed/untreated PPD (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519070/) so my unscientific advice would be to focus on what you can control - it sounds like you sought out help and that's all you can do! You can't control whether or not you get PPD, only whether you're willing to do something about addressing it. So feel good about that choice!

 

[00familyman]

@notloveisnotjesus I know this is science based parenting and you’re asking for real data. I don’t have any. I just want you know that I’m sure you were trying your best and my heart breaks for you if you looked at this study and are beating yourself up about it.

 

[kenwsr63]

@notloveisnotjesus I mean, maybe if they had observed them at a year or 18 months and then followed up it would be the same results? Like assume that the mothers display consistent levels of affection throughout a child’s life. It’s probably not JUST at 8 months but over time. I hope because I had horrible PPD too

 

[mh86]

@notloveisnotjesus Not a scientific take, but I’d say actively trying your best and acknowledging your struggles and possible shortcomings makes you a top notch Mom and your kid is very lucky to have you for a Mom.

 

[katrina2017]

@jesrdking As a reminder, these studies only look at correlation, not causation.

For a long time it was believed "refrigerator mothers" - cold and unaffectionate mothers - caused autism. It turns out that we were seeing something different - autism is genetic, so often the mothers had symptoms of autism too. A "lurking variable" or confounder was the cause of both - genetics.