Parental Stress Block Maternal Sensitivity, Weakens Mother-Child Relationship

A study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has revealed the effects of the stress of parenting in the brains of both mothers and their children.The researchers analysed the brain activity of 31 pairs of mother and child from Singapore while they were watching children’s animation clips together.
They found that mothers who reported higher
levels of parenting stress had less synchrony in brain activity with their
child (all aged around 3 years old) than those who reported lower levels of
parenting stress.The specific brain region monitored for
synchrony was the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with the ability to
understand others’ point of view.In general, when the parent and child show
highly similar brain activity in the same area(s) of the brain (i.e. greater
synchrony), it suggests that both are highly tuned in to each other’s emotional
states.
Parenting stress occurs when the demands of
parenting exceed the coping resources that a parent perceives they have available.
Excessive parenting stress can block maternal sensitivity, lead to reactions
that punish the child and negatively affect the parent-child relationship for
the long term.
Senior author of the research Assistant
Professor Gianluca Esposito, from the School of Social Sciences who leads the
Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab (SAN-Lab) at NTU Singapore, said, “Our
study shows that parenting stress may very well weaken mother-child
communication early in the process of social interaction. Our observations
likely stem from the stressed mother's reduced ability to share her child's
perspective. This inability to appreciate the child’s viewpoint may reduce the
quality of parental engagement and undermine the mother-child relationship in
the long run.”
The study, done in collaboration with
researchers from the United States’ National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development and Italy’s University of Trento and University of Padova,
was published in Nature Scientific Reports in August 2019.
How the study was done
The researchers used functional Near-infrared
Spectroscopy (fNIRS) caps as a non-invasive way to measure brain activation
based on blood concentration levels in the brain. They combined the use of the
caps with a recently developed method called tandem hyperscanning that
simultaneously records the brain activity of two people.
Before starting the experiment, mothers answered
a questionnaire that aims to measure parenting stress. The mother-child pairs
then wore the fNIRS caps with the child sitting on the mother’s lap while both
watched animation clips from Brave, Peppa Pig and The Incredibles together.
The NTU research team compared the mother’s and
child’s brain activity to calculate brain-to-brain synchrony and found that for
those parents reporting higher levels of parenting stress, the degree of
mother-child synchrony in part of the prefrontal cortex was diminished,
compared to those parents reporting lower stress who had better synchrony.
The paper’s first author Ms Atiqah Azhari, a PhD
candidate at the SAN-Lab at NTU, said, “Our study brings us a step closer to
uncovering how parenting stress weakens the mother-child relationship on a
day-to-day basis. We did not expect to find a clear relationship between
parenting stress and brain synchrony when the mother and child did something as
simple as watching animation together. This suggests that the mother’s mental
wellbeing is important for optimal mother-child engagement at the cognitive
level.”
The team now intends to study the effects of
parenting stress on father-child brain synchrony.
Source: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore -https://media.ntu.edu.sg/NewsReleases/Pages/newsdetail.aspx?news=2cea9ac3-18a5-4541-ad74-ec7a35519f84
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