How Does Maternal Childhood Trauma, Adult Attachment, Depression, and Parental Reflective Functioning Affect Preschool Children’s Socio-emotional Development?

This exploratory study examined the relationship that maternal experience of early childhood trauma, symptoms of depression, adult attachment style, and parental reflective functioning have on preschool children’s socio-emotional development. The participants of this study were 125 mother–child dyads. Results from this study show that maternal symptoms of depression and lower parental reflective functioning significantly predicted a risk to their child’s socio-emotional development. Interestingly, avoidant attachment style significantly predicted decreased levels of parental reflective functioning, whereas anxious attachment style and childhood trauma significantly predicted maternal symptoms of depression. This particular study found that when differentiating between different types of trauma, the experience of sexual abuse during childhood significantly predicted maternal symptoms of depression. Finally, this study sought to explore the mediator role of parental reflective functioning and found that both parental reflective functioning and symptoms of depression mediated the effect that childhood experience of trauma and insecure attachment styles had on children’s socio-emotional development.