A 21-year longitudinal birth cohort study has revealed that “harsh parenting” during various developmental milestones in a child’s life can majorly disrupt their ability to process and regulate emotion, leading to a higher risk of anxiety and depression.
The study was conducted with information from 173 children in Detroit, Chicago, and Toledo, Ohio. Futurity reports that the study used a new statistical method to examine “sensitive periods” in childhood, mainly when a child’s brain is more susceptible to outside influence. Researchers combined those statistics with brain imaging to understand how the brain processes information.
Data was collected from the Future of Families and Child Well-being Study from February 1998 to June 2021.
Parents Self-Reported Their Own Harsh Parenting Moments
The study relied on parents who recorded incidents involving “harsh parenting” categorized as psychological or physical aggression and any time they engaged in more responsive or “warm parenting” moments.
Parents self-reported when their children were 3, 5, and 9. Researchers also conducted neuroimaging at 15 years old, and then during the COVID-19 pandemic, they asked participants to share any symptoms of anxiety and/or depression.
The Effects Of Harsh Parenting Versus Warm Parenting
According to researchers, harsh parenting appears to affect the overall organization of the brain in early adolescence. However, a primary concern is later in a child’s development when the practice can directly affect the corticolimbic circuit, an area of the brain that includes the amygdala and frontal cortex, which regulate emotion.
Harsh parenting, according to the study, can increase the chance of anxiety and depression, while warm parenting shows a marked reduction in those same symptoms.
In the researchers’ own words:
This longitudinal cohort study of 173 youths demonstrated that associations between harsh parenting and brain architecture were widespread in early childhood, but localized to corticolimbic circuitry in late childhood. Associations with warm parenting were localized to corticolimbic regions in middle childhood, which, in turn, were associated with lower internalizing symptoms in early adulthood during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We’ve reported on various occasions that more aggressive parenting has adverse effects on a child’s overall mental health into adulthood; this study serves as another reminder that patience and understanding can go a long way when reading our children.
You can read the full study on the Jama Network.
