Effect of maternal emotional symptoms on emotional and behavioral problems in preschool children
Objective To explore the mediating role of psychological and physical aggression in the association between mater-nal emotional symptoms with emotional and behavioral problems in preschool children,so as to provide references for effective inter-vention of risk factors related to children's emotional and behavioral problems.Methods A longitudinal study was conducted to se-lect 12 kindergarten children and their mothers in Wuhu City,Anhui Province by using stratified clustering sampling.The baseline survey was carried out in June 2021,followed up every six months,and a total of 3 follow-ups were administered.Totally 853 valid questionnaires of junior class children were included by the survey data from baseline,second and thirl follow-ups.The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21(DASS-21),the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales(CTSPC)and the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire(SDQ)were used to measure maternal emotional symptoms,psychological and physical aggression,and children's e-motional and behavioral problems,respectively.Results The physical aggression of mothers towards children in boys was higher than in girls(t=3.53,P＜0.05).The results of correlation analysis showed that maternal depressive symptoms were positively corre-lated with psychological aggression,physical aggression and children's SDQ scores(r=0.20,0.21,0.18,P＜0.01),maternal anxi-ety symptoms were positively correlated with psychological aggression,physical aggression and children's SDQ scores(r=0.24,0.22,0.10,P＜0.01),respectively;maternal stress symptoms were positively correlated with psychological aggression,physical ag-gression.The SDQ scores were positively correlated(r=0.26,0.25,0.18,P＜0.01),and the scores of maternal psychological ag-gression and physical aggression were positively correlated with the SDQ scores of children(r=0.12,0.16,P＜0.01).The mediating analysis showed that after controlling for related confounding factors,psychological aggression played a partial mediating effect in the association between maternal depressive symptoms and children's emotional and behavioral problems,and the mediating effect ratio was 8.05％.Physical aggression played a partial mediating effect in the association between maternal depression,anxiety and stress symptoms and children's emotional and behavioral problems,which were 15.94％,11.73％and 12.54％(P＜0.05),respectively.Conclusions Psychological and physical aggression play mediating roles in the association between maternal emotional symptoms and children's emotional and behavioral problems,and actively improving maternal emotional symptoms and their children's disci-pline methods can help reduce the occurrence of emotional and behavioral problems in preschool children.
万方数据
维普
