Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 9, 2026

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Maternal depressive symptoms, parenting self-efficacy, and child growth
Pamela J Surkan1, Ichiro Kawachi, Louise M Ryan
1Harvard School of Public Health, Landmark Center, 401 Park Dr, 4th Floor West, Room 415, Boston, MA 02215, USA. psurkan@hsph.harvard.edu
Objectives:
We assessed whether maternal depressive symptoms and parenting self-efficacy were associated with child growth delay.
Methods:
We collected data from a random sample of 595 low-income mothers and their children aged 6 to 24 months in Teresina, Piauí, Brazil, including information on sociodemographic characteristics, mothers' depressive symptoms and parenting self-efficacy, and children's anthropometric characteristics. We used adjusted logistic regression models in our analyses.
Results:
Depressive symptoms among mothers were associated with 1.8 times higher odds (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1, 2.9) of short stature among children. Parenting self-efficacy was not associated with short stature, nor did it mediate or modify the relationship between depressive symptoms and short stature. Maternal depressive symptoms and self-efficacy were not related to child underweight.
Conclusions:
Our results showed that among low-income Brazilian families maternal depressive symptoms, but not self-efficacy, were associated with short stature in children aged 6 to 24 months after adjustment for known predictors of growth.
More Related Videos
06:39Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants
Published on: June 13, 2021
08:09Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Related Concept Videos
Sources of Self-Esteem I: Family Experience
Self-Evaluation: Self-Enhancement and Self-Verification
Socioemotional Development during Infancy
Primary Temperament Types
Stella Chess...
Relationship with Parents: Attachment
Self-Efficacy
Sources of Self-Esteem II: Performance Feedback