The Effects of Rumination on the Timing of Maternal and Child Negative Affect

Abstract

The current study examined whether rumination serves as a moderator of the temporal association between maternal and child negative affect. Participants included 88 mothers with a history of major depressive episodes and their 123 children. During an initial assessment, mothers and their children completed measures assessing negative affect and children completed a measure assessing the tendency to ruminate in response to such symptoms. Every 6 weeks for the subsequent year, mothers and their children completed measures assessing negative affect. Consistent with hypotheses, children with a ruminative response style were more likely than other children to report elevations in negative affect when their mothers' level of negative affect increased over time. Neither child gender nor mothers' current clinical depression status moderated the association between child rumination and maternal negative affect.

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Acknowledgments

Meir Flancbaum and Caroline Oppenheimer have contributed to this article equally and share first authorship. The research reported in this article was supported by research grants from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression awarded to John R. Z. Abela. Also, NIMH grant (5R01 MH077195), awarded to Benjamin L. Hankin and John R. Z. Abela, helped to support writing of this article. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Mental Health or National Institutes of Health.

Notes

Note: MDD = major depressive disorder; BDI = Beck Depression Inventory; CDI = Children's Depression Inventory; CRSQ–Ruminative = Children's Response Style Questionnaire–Ruminative subscale.

***Correlation is significant, p < .001.

Note: BDI = Beck Depression Inventory; CDI = Children's Depression Inventory; CRSQ–Ruminative = Children's Response Style Questionnaire.

**Correlation is significant at p < .01.

Note: BDI = Beck Depression Inventory; CDI = Children's Depression Inventory.

*p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. ***p ≤ .001.