While the role of a mother’s stress, anxiety and depression on a child’s behavioural and cognitive development has been well established, less is known about the connection between a father’s mental health and that child’s progress.
Counterintuitively, and in contrast to the findings of other studies examining this relationship, the team found that mild mental health issues experienced by a father during pregnancy and early childhood had little to no effect.
First author, Dr Sherri Lee Jones, a research associate at Douglas Research Centre at McGill University explained that the initial meta-analysis found that paternal mental health issues present during pregnancy, particularly depression, increased the risk of behavioural problems and doubled the risk of suffering from psychiatric disorders in school-aged children.
“Paternal depression was associated with lower prosocial skills, greater peer problems, and a higher incidence of psychiatric disorders in six- to seven-year-olds. Moreover, chronic exposure to parental mental health symptoms (from the prenatal period and persisting into middle childhood) may amplify associations with child outcomes over time,” she said.
“However, our findings show that fathers’ reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression were not associated with worse behavioural and cognitive outcomes in their children, as previously found in other studies.
“More specifically, slightly higher levels of depressive symptoms reported by fathers when their partner was pregnant were associated with fewer behavioural difficulties in their child at about six to eight years of age.
“The associations between higher paternal mental health symptoms higher cognitive performance and fewer behavioural difficulties in the child were unexpected and present an apparent paradox considering the existing body of literature.”
The first assessments, conducted from pregnancy up to age two, included parental mental health and psychosocial measures, such as the parents’ highest level of education, relationship satisfaction, and parenting perceptions.
The second assessment was conducted at the critical age of six to eight years, when children are expected to make increased use of their behavioural and cognitive skills.
“We also collected data on the parents’ and child’s full health history (e.g., health conditions, diagnoses, child pubertal examination, parental alcohol consumption, smoking, and drug use), as well as a physical examination to determine the child’s overall health (i.e., vital signs, height, weight, and skin fold measurement),” the authors said.
“Children also provided saliva samples and structural brain images acquired with magnetic resonance imaging.”
Each parent self-reported the Parental Cognitions and Conduct Toward the Infant Scale (PACOTIS) at three timepoints: 3, 12, and 24 months after birth. each parent also completed the Quality Marriage Index (QMI).
Seven subscales of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fifth Edition (WISC-V) were administered by a trained child neuropsychologist to the child participants to assess cognition, with a full-scale IQ score derived from the subscales.
A verbal comprehension index score was also derived from the similarities and vocabulary subscales, and a fluid reasoning index score was derived from the matrix reasoning and Figure Weights subscales.
“After accounting for the contribution of mothers’ symptoms and parental education levels, we saw that both parents matter in the cognitive-behavioural development of their children, however, potentially not in the same ways,” Dr Jones said.
Higher symptoms of anxiety and depression among mothers were associated with adverse childhood behavioural outcomes, both at birth and during middle-childhood. In contrast, slightly higher, but still mild depressive symptoms among fathers during pregnancy were actually associated with fewer behavioural and emotional difficulties in children aged six to eight years.
This included children being able to sit still for long periods of time, infrequently losing their temper, and having a good attention span, as reported by parents in questionnaires.
“It is unclear why we do not find a similar pattern for fathers as we do for mothers; namely that the father’s reports of anxiety and depressive symptoms were not necessarily linked to poorer child outcomes,” Dr Jones said.
None of the factors the researchers examined could explain the associations between the father’s mental health symptoms and the child’s outcomes, and the authors highlighted that amongst their community sample, parental levels of self-reported anxious and depressive symptoms were variable and typically less severe than among a clinically diagnosed population.
“Similarly, children in our sample scored within normal ranges on all SDQ subscales,” the authors said.