Furthermore, women who are aggressive and disruptive in their own teen years are more likely to become depressed in pregnancy. Moms' history predicts their own children's anti-social behaviour.
That's the conclusion of a new study conducted by researchers at Cardiff University, King's College London, and the University of Bristol.
The study considered the role of mothers' depression by looking at 120 British youth from inner-city areas.
"Much attention has been given to the effects of postnatal depression on young infants," notes Dale F. Hay, professor of psychology at Cardiff University Wales, a study co-author.
"But depression during pregnancy may also affect the unborn child." The youths' mothers were interviewed while they were pregnant, after they gave birth, and when their children were four, 11, and 16-years-old, said a Cardiff release.
The study found that mothers who became depressed when pregnant were four times as likely to have children who were violent at 16 years.
This was true for both boys and girls. The mothers' depression, in turn, was predicted by their own aggressive and disruptive behaviour as teens.
The link between depression in pregnancy and the children's violence couldn't be explained by other factors in the families' environments, such as social class, ethnicity, or family structure; the mothers' age, education, marital status, or IQ; or depression at other times in the children's lives.
The research appeared in the January/February issue of Child Development.
