A Family Affair: Investigating How Parents’ Depressive Symptoms Impacts Family Cohesion Through Couple and Parent-child Hostility and Withdrawal

Abstract

Depressive symptoms can be extremely distressing for the impacted individual, but the deleterious outcomes extend beyond the individual. Yet, the impact on families is frequently overlooked, and little is known about how parents’ depressive symptoms affect family outcomes. The current research investigated whether parents’ depressive symptoms predicted lower family cohesion via greater hostility and withdrawal in both couple and parent-child relationships. Each parent from a community sample of 285 mixed-gender couples (N = 570) completed self-reported measures of depressive symptoms, couple and parent-child hostility and withdrawal, and family cohesion. Families then attended a laboratory visit where they were video-recorded engaging in a 5-minute free-play interaction, which trained coders used to rate couple and parent-child hostility and withdrawal, as well as overall family cohesion. Structural equation modelling revealed that parents’ depressive symptoms predicted lower self-reported cohesion via couples’ self-reported hostility and withdrawal. Couples’ hostility and withdrawal also spilled over into self-reported parent-child withdrawal, which in turn predicted lower cohesion. However, these predicted associations were not replicated with the observational data. The self-report results indicate that parents’ evaluations of the couple relationship may play a pivotal role in determining whether parents’ depressive symptoms go on to negatively impact perceived family cohesion. These findings offer novel evidence identifying parents’ depressive symptoms as a risk factor for family cohesion and carry important clinical implications. The results also offer important future directions, including methodological recommendations for self-report and observational assessments, as well as examining the role of children’s contribution to family functioning.