Maternal trauma and emotional availability in early mother-infant interaction: findings from the Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Well-being Study (MPEWS) cohort

ABSTRACT

Understanding how a mother’s traumatic experiences influence her interactions with her infant may have importance for understanding infant development and mental health. Data for this study were drawn from an Australian pregnancy cohort, the Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study. Maternal trauma from Childhood, Childbirth Experiences, and Stressful Life Events were examined. At six-months postpartum, 211 predominantly first-time mothers (mean age 31.5 years), and their infants, were video-recorded interacting for 40 minutes. Interactions were assessed with the Emotional Availability (EA) Scales. Using structural equation modelling to test multiple mediation pathways, moderate-to-severe childhood trauma had only a direct effect on reducing maternal EA with the infant (β=−.17, p=.031), as did current stressful life events (β=−.19, p=.019), after controlling for maternal depression, age, and tertiary education. This highlights that proximate trauma specific to the perinatal period may not account for the effect of distal childhood trauma on maternal EA at six-months postpartum.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood trauma
• childbirth
• stressful life events
• mother-infant
• emotional availability

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank those who have supported the development of MPEWS including Marinus van IJzendoorn and Michael Permezel. In addition, Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, Peter Fonagy, and Robert Emde in their advice on the design of the postpartum interactional assessment within the study. The authors thank Josephine Power for her assistance with the EAS coding of the mother-infant interactions. The authors also thank staff, students, and volunteers on the MPEWS study as well as study co-ordinators: Nicole Brooks and Tina Vaiano for their contribution to MPEWS. In addition, students and staff who assisted with undertaking this data reported and collected for MPEWS in Melbourne: Sunaina Seth, Emma Austin, Madeline Young, Brittany Watkins, Rebecca Knapp, and Alex Flowers. We are also sincerely grateful to the study participants who have contributed a substantial amount of time to participate in this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported through the 2012 National Priority Funding Round of Beyond Blue in a three-year research grant (ID 519240) and a 2015 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grant for 5 years (APP1106823). Financial support has also been obtained from the Academic Research and Development Grants, Mercy Health and Centre for Mental Health and Well-Being, and Deakin University.