Center for Educational Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, China.
Front Public Health. 2023 Feb 7;11:962951. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.962951. eCollection 2023.
Although the relationships between parental mental health and child internalizing and externalizing problems have been explored by previous studies, the pathways between these two variables need further exploration. The present study aims to explore the relationships between parental depression and child internalizing and externalizing problems and to examine the roles of parenting stress and child maltreatment in those relationships within the Chinese cultural context.
Data were collected from 855 Chinese families with preschool-aged children, and mediation analysis was used to examine the pathways between these variables.
The results show that parental depression is positively associated with child internalizing and externalizing problems, and child maltreatment and the combination of parenting stress and child maltreatment mediated the relationships between parental depression and child internalizing and externalizing problems, respectively. These findings suggest that parental depression not only has a direct effect on child internalizing and externalizing problems but also has an indirect effect parenting stress and child maltreatment.
Decreasing the levels of parenting stress and child maltreatment should be applied in interventions to break the relationships between parental depression and child internalizing and externalizing problems within the Chinese cultural context.
尽管先前的研究已经探讨了父母心理健康与儿童内化和外化问题之间的关系，但这两个变量之间的途径仍需要进一步探索。本研究旨在探讨中国文化背景下父母抑郁与儿童内化和外化问题之间的关系，并检验育儿压力和儿童虐待在这些关系中的作用。
本研究的数据来自 855 个有学龄前儿童的中国家庭，采用中介分析来检验这些变量之间的关系。
结果表明，父母抑郁与儿童内化和外化问题呈正相关，儿童虐待以及育儿压力与儿童虐待的结合分别在父母抑郁与儿童内化和外化问题之间起中介作用。这些发现表明，父母抑郁不仅对儿童内化和外化问题有直接影响，而且对育儿压力和儿童虐待有间接影响。
在中国文化背景下，应该通过降低育儿压力和儿童虐待的水平来干预，以打破父母抑郁与儿童内化和外化问题之间的关系。
