The effects of rumination on the timing of maternal and child negative affect

The current study examined whether rumination serves as a moderator of the temporal association between maternal and child negative affect. Participants included 88 mothers with a history of major depressive episodes and their 123 children. During an initial assessment, mothers and their children completed measures assessing negative affect and children completed a measure assessing the tendency to ruminate in response to such symptoms. Every 6 weeks for the subsequent year, mothers and their children completed measures assessing negative affect. Consistent with hypotheses, children with a ruminative response style were more likely than other children to report elevations in negative affect when their mothers' level of negative affect increased over time. Neither child gender nor mothers' current clinical depression status moderated the association between child rumination and maternal negative affect.