Parents likely to pass emotional problems to child

Children of parents with depression, or where there is an unhappy relationship between a mother and father, are more likely to have emotional or behavioural problems, a wide-ranging study has found.

According to the Growing up in Ireland report, depression in a mother is more detrimental because of the knock-on effect on the mother-child relationship, while a fathers’ depression and marital satisfaction were not deemed to be directly related to children’s difficulties.

One fifth of children whose mothers had only finished secondary school or less had emotional problems of some kind, and overall those who lived in lower-income households were more likely to have problems with conduct and hyperactivity and peer relationships.