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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Aug 17.
Published in final edited form as: Depress Anxiety. 2021 Aug 2;38(12):1245–1255. doi: 10.1002/da.23207

Examining the Bidirectional Relationships Between Maternal Intrusiveness and Child Internalizing Symptoms in a Community Sample: A Longitudinal Study from Infancy to Middle Childhood

Hannah Hunter 1, Kristy Benoit Allen 1, Ran Liu 2, Julia Jaekel 3,4, Martha Ann Bell 5
PMCID: PMC9385210  NIHMSID: NIHMS1828929  PMID: 34339555

Abstract

Background:

Myriad parenting behaviors have been linked to the development of internalizing disorders in children. Intrusive parenting, characterized by autonomy-limiting behaviors that hold the parent’s agenda above that of the child, may uniquely contribute to the development of child internalizing symptoms. The current study investigates bidirectional effects between maternal intrusiveness and internalizing symptomology from infancy to middle childhood.

Methods:

Participants were a community sample of 218 infant-mother dyads assessed at 7 timepoints (5 and 10 months; 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9 years). Maternal intrusiveness was behaviorally coded at all timepoints; mothers completed the CBCL for their child at ages 3, 4, 6, and 9 years. The empirically derived Internalizing subscale was used to assess child internalizing symptoms.

Results:

About 1/3 to ½ of mothers displayed maternal intrusiveness across infancy and childhood, with the exception of ages 2–3 years, when an increase in the number of mothers displaying intrusiveness was observed. A cross-lagged panel model showed that intrusiveness and internalizing symptoms were concurrently related at 3 years, but this relationship disappeared when we controlled for maternal education. There was no evidence of prospective relationships between our constructs.

Conclusions:

Mothers in a community-based sample may increase in intrusiveness in the toddler and early preschool years as children strive for more autonomy. Intrusiveness may play more of a maintenance role in child internalizing symptoms, and associations between maternal intrusiveness and child internalizing symptomatology may be weaker than hypothesized, varying by maternal education. Suggestions for assessing intrusive parenting in future studies are discussed.

Keywords: internalizing disorders, parent-child relationships, parental intrusiveness, childhood, longitudinal studies, parenting

Due to their high prevalence and dearth of accessible treatment, childhood anxiety and depression are significant public health issues (for anxiety see Allen, Benningfield, & Blackford, 2020; for depression see Lima et al., 2013). Symptoms of both disorders are linked to significant impairments in children’s functioning. Childhood anxiety leads to impairments in academic performance, social relationships, and family functioning (Kendall, Safford, Flannery-Schroeder, & Webb, 2004); depressive symptoms are linked to later substance use, psychological disorders, and relational impairments (Copeland, Alaie, Jonsson, & Shanahan, 2020). It is therefore critically important to identify early risk factors for internalizing symptoms in children, to help design more effective prevention and intervention programs for those affected.

Parenting behaviors play an important role in childhood anxiety symptoms (see McLeod, Wood, & Weisz, 2007 for review), as well as depressive symptoms (see Rose, Roman, Mwaba, & Ismail, 2018 for review). While parental rejection and control have been the focus of most studies of parenting behaviors and child internalizing symptoms, analysis of more fine-tuned parenting dimensions is increasingly common. One sub-dimension of parental control gaining attention in relation to childhood depression and anxiety is intrusive parenting, characterized by developmentally inappropriate overcontrol (McLeod et al., 2007) and considered a subdimension of psychological control (Barber, 2002). While intrusiveness is often conceptualized as a causal factor in the development of child internalizing symptomatology, particularly anxiety, these symptoms may also evoke parental intrusiveness (e.g., Hudson, Doyle, & Gar, 2009), suggesting a bidirectional process. However, much of this evidence is cross-sectional, and the current study will be one of few to longitudinally assess the relationship between intrusive parenting and child internalizing symptoms. The main aim is to elucidate potential bidirectional influences between parental intrusiveness and child internalizing symptoms by examining changes in these constructs across 4 timepoints in middle childhood, as well as examining the stability of intrusiveness across 7 timepoints from infancy to middle childhood.

Intrusive Parenting

There is little consensus when defining the term intrusive in the psychological literature: it has been used synonymously with psychologically controlling, overprotective, overcontrolling, insensitive, and autonomy-restricting (e.g., Graziano, Keane, & Calkins, 2010; Biringen & Robinson, 1991; Barber, 2002; Taylor, Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Widaman, 2013). The developmental literature is more consistent than the clinical literature, typically defining intrusive parenting as a subdimension of parental control that encompasses verbal and physical behaviors that may limit a child’s autonomy and/or are in line with a mother’s own agenda rather than that of the child (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Barber, 2002; Biringen & Robinson, 1991). We use this definition in our study, as do others in this field (e.g., Broomell, Smith, Calkins, & Bell, 2020; Murray et al., 2012; McLeod, Wood, & Avney, 2011). Additionally, some researchers consider intrusiveness as on a continuum, as it may be needed to guide infant and child behaviors towards more complex goals, but on the other hand, it may be used in ways that are inappropriate given a child’s level of functioning (Broomell et al., 2020).

Intrusiveness as a concept appears to be of primary interest to developmental psychologists studying infant and toddler populations. Clinical research in early childhood internalizing disorders tends to use the term parental control, of which intrusiveness is an important sub-dimension (McLeod et al., 2007). Despite these semantic differences, high levels of intrusive parenting are linked to negative child outcomes as early as infancy. Specifically, intrusive parenting enhances infants’ perceptions of threat (e.g., Huffmeijer, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Gervain, 2020; Affrunti & Ginsburg, 2012), and limits a child’s ability to independently develop effective coping skills (Rork & Morris, 2009). In childhood, links between psychological control and internalizing symptoms are supported by a recent meta-analysis (Pinquart, 2017). Few studies look specifically at intrusive parenting within psychological control; similarly, this literature is predominantly cross-sectional, limiting the conclusions that can be drawn about the directionality of these effects.

Evidence for Bidirectionality

Most literature on intrusiveness assumes a causal effect on child anxiety and depressive symptoms, but evidence suggests that these symptoms may elicit intrusive behavior from parents. Existing knowledge regarding the bidirectional associations between intrusive parenting and child temperament (Belsky, 1984; Lengua & Kovacs, 2005) provide a framework for understanding how these parenting behaviors may also interact with child internalizing symptoms. Specifically, children displaying negative emotionality may elicit parenting that is more controlling, which may, in turn, increase internalizing symptoms. Consistently small effect sizes between psychological control and internalizing symptoms in longitudinal studies also suggest that there may be bidirectional and lasting effects between these constructs that may have been missed in previous studies (Pinquart, 2017). By understanding how both halves of the parent-child dyad play a role in the interactions that may shape pathology over time, psychologists can work towards creating effective prevention programs and accessible interventions for those affected. From a public health perspective, it is therefore essential to identify factors which contribute to the development of internalizing symptoms longitudinally, especially in infancy and early childhood.

Current Study

The current study used a seven-wave longitudinal design, spanning from infancy to middle childhood (ages 5 and 10 months; 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 years), in order to elucidate the ways in which intrusive parenting may influence child internalizing symptomatology, as well as the ways that these symptoms may predict increases in future intrusiveness. The focus on intrusiveness allowed us to discern whether there are unique effects associated with this sub-dimension of parental control. By allowing for and testing bidirectional pathways between dyads, we aimed to identify naturalistic processes that occur during the early years of life. Moreover, we controlled for associations among maternal education, intrusiveness, and internalizing symptoms. As our study did not collect data on family socioeconomic status, we controlled for maternal education given its links with child internalizing symptoms (e.g., Zhang, 2014) and parenting behaviors (e.g., Woodward et al., 2018). Specifically, mothers with higher levels of education tend to have children with fewer mental health concerns (Meyrose et al., 2018) and engage in more positive parenting behaviors (Woodward et al., 2018). We did not include child gender as a covariate due to the lack of empirical support for gender differences in both of the constructs of interest (e.g., McLeod et al., 2007).

Hypotheses

We hypothesized that: (1) maternal intrusiveness at 5 months will predict intrusiveness at 10 months, intrusiveness at 10 months will predict intrusiveness at 2 years, and intrusiveness at 2 years will predict both intrusiveness at age 3 years as well as internalizing symptoms at 3 years, after controlling for maternal education; (2) there will be positive, concurrent and bidirectional relationships between child internalizing symptoms and maternal intrusiveness from ages 3 years to 9 years, after controlling for maternal education.

Method

Participants

Participants are a community sample of 218 mother-infant dyads (50.5% female infants; all biological mothers) recruited from southwest Virginia and central North Carolina. Dyads were two cohorts of children (75%) of a broader longitudinal study assessing cognition and emotion across early development. The third cohort was not part of these analyses because they did not have a research visit at age 6. In order to be conservative in estimating missing data, all dyads from these two cohorts with fewer than four visits across all seven waves of data were removed from analyses, leaving our final sample of 218 dyads. Recruitment targeted healthy infants with no prenatal complications or developmental delays at 5 months. Each location recruited approximately one half of the broader longitudinal study using identical methods including advertisements, fliers, and mailing lists. At the first visit, infants were on average 5 months of age (M=162.19 days, SD=6.97 days). Participant demographics are representative of both locations, and dyads at the first and last visits did not differ significantly on any demographic variables (see Table 1). The main reason for attrition across the 9-year study was families moving out of the local area.

Table 1.

Comparison of Participant Demographics at First and Last Time Point

5 Month Visit (n=207) 9 Year Visit (n=177)
M (SD) M (SD) F
Mom Age (at 5-month visit) 29.04 (6.10) 29.14 (6.30) 0.01
X 2
Child Sex 0.39
 Male 48.8% 52.0%
 Female 51.2% 48.0%
Mom Race 0.87
 White 81.6% 80.2%
 Black or African American 15.5% 15.3%
 Multi-Racial/Other 1.9% 2.8%
 Asian 0.5% 1.1%
 Native Hawaiian/Other 0.5% 0.6%
Mom Education Level 0.95
 Grade School 0.0% 0.0%
 Some High School 3.1% 2.7%
 High School Graduate 5.0% 5.4%
 Some College/2-Year College Degree 26.7% 25.5%
 Graduate of 4-Year College 38.5% 35.6%
 Master’s Degree 22.4% 26.8%
 PhD, MD or Other Doctoral Degree 4.3% 4.0%
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Note: Participants at first and last visits did not differ significantly on any demographic variables listed.

Procedures

Identical protocols were used at both data collection locations. Research assistants from each location were trained together by the project’s Principal Investigator (last author) on protocol administration, as well as on data collection and coding. To ensure that identical protocol administration was maintained between the two locations, the Virginia lab periodically reviewed video recordings of the visits conducted by the North Carolina lab. All research procedures were approved by the respective Institutional Review Boards. Mothers were given monetary compensation at each visit, and children received a small toy at all but the infant visits. Prior to the lab visit, mothers completed various questionnaires regarding their child’s behavior and development, including the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1994) beginning at age 3 (see Measures). At each lab visit, dyads participated in developmentally appropriate interaction tasks that were structured in their goals (see Figure 1 for a full description). All interaction tasks were recorded and later coded in 30 second epochs by coders trained to reliability (see Measures).

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Tasks and descriptions

Measures

Child Internalizing

At ages 3, 4, 6, and 9 years, parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1994), a parent-report measure that identifies problem behaviors in children. Parents completed either the CBCL/1½–5 or the CBCL/6–18, depending on the child’s age at the time of assessment. Reliability and validity have been established for both forms (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), including predictive validity of the Internalizing subscale (CBCL-INT) (Aschenbrand, Angelosante, & Kendall, 2005; de la Osa et al., 2015). Reliability of the CBCL-INT scale in this sample was good (3 years, α=0.80; 4 years, α=0.86; 6 years, α=0.82; 9 years, α=0.83). We used the CBCL’s standardized T scores in order to account for the differences in questionnaire versions.

Maternal Intrusiveness

The maternal behavioral coding scheme used in this study was adapted from published studies and included a range of maternal behaviors, such as intrusiveness, positive affect, and sensitivity/responsiveness (Calkins, Hungerford, & Dedmon, 2004; Smith, Calkins, Keane, Anastopoulos, & Shelton, 2004). The same coding scheme was used from child ages 2 years to 9 years to ensure consistency of behavioral coding across a wide range of development. (The 5 and 10-month coding scheme included developmentally appropriate maternal behaviors, such as physical stimulation, that were not part of the coding at older ages.) All behavioral coding of interaction tasks (see Figure 1 for full task descriptions) was completed by the Virginia lab group, and between 20 and 30% of videos at each age were double-coded for reliability.

Intrusiveness was defined as mother-centered interactions that fail to consider the interests of the child. This was coded on a 4-point scale, from 1 – None to 4 – High. Low scoring mothers display no or subtle instances of intrusive behavior, while high scoring mothers are consistently intrusive throughout the interaction. Examples of intrusive behavior include failing to modulate behaviors that the child turns away from or expresses negative affect to, offering a continuous barrage of stimulation that overwhelms the child, not allowing the child to control the pace of the task, taking away objects or shifting the focus of the task before the child is ready, or physically grabbing or moving the child. An overall intrusiveness score was calculated at each timepoint for each mother by creating an average of the mother’s intrusiveness values at each epoch across all tasks. Inter-rater reliability for intrusiveness was acceptable for all tasks at all time points (ICC’s ranging from 0.80–1.00).

Data Analytic Plan

Maternal intrusiveness was significantly right-skewed and kurtotic at all time-points (see Table 2), resistant to common transformations, and therefore coded as a binary variable for statistical analyses. Mothers with an average intrusiveness score of 1 (showed no instances of intrusiveness across tasks) were coded as a 0, and mothers with an average intrusiveness score greater than 1 (showed some instances of intrusiveness) were coded as a 1. We computed descriptive analyses and correlations for all study variables (see Table 2). Based on previous literature indicating that maternal education significantly influences parenting behaviors (e.g., Fox, Platz, & Bently, 1995), anxiety symptoms (Zhang, 2014), and childhood mental health in general (e.g., Meyrose et al., 2018), we included it as a covariate in all analyses. Although maternal level of education was coded into seven interval-scaled categories initially (Table 2), it was normally distributed and subsequently treated as a continuous variable in main analyses.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations for Variables of Interest

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
1. Gender
2. Education −.001
3. Mat. Age .06 .41**
4. INT3 .16* −.21** −.22**
5. INT4 .06 −.10 −.22** .61**
6. INT6 .09 −.05 −.13 .42** .50**
7. INT9 .11 .03 −.22** .30** .35* .58**
8. INTR 5 .06 −.04 −.04 .03 .06 .03 −.06
9. INTR10 .02 .20** .09 .02 .06 .09 .04 .09
10. INTR2 .12 −.18* −.09 .03 .08 −.15* .02 −.04 −.07
11. INTR3 −.05 −.17* −.13 .18* .05 .03 .09 .13 −.05 .15*
12. INTR4 .06 −.20* −.09 .08 −.08 −.01 −.12 .11 −.10 −.06 .14
13. INTR6 .17* −.09 −.02 .06 .03 −.01 −.05 .16* −.14 .07 .04 .19*
14. INTR9 .11 −.13 −.11 .09 .01 −.04 .08 .06 −.12 .07 .02 .11 .71**
Mean 48.01 46.97 48.59 51.27
SD 9.03 9.87 9.66 9.28
Range 29–70 29–78 33–86 33–73
Proportion ‘Some Intrusiveness’ 45% 44% 77% 70% 45% 48% 31%
N ‘Some Intrusiveness’ 90 92 161 142 84 84 55
Skewness (Before Dichotomization) 2.29 2.55 1.39 2.80 2.15 4.22 4.06
Kurtosis (Before Dichotomization) 6.11 8.40 1.98 10.57 4.16 23.22 20.87
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Note:

*

p<.05

**

p<.001

Mat. – Maternal; INT – CBCL Internalizing score; INTR – Maternal Intrusiveness. Gender coded as 1=Male, 0=Female; Maternal Education coded as: 1= Grade School, 2=Some High School, 3=High School Graduate, 4=Some College or 2-Year College Degree, 5=College Graduate of 4-Year College, 6=Master’s Degree, 7= PhD, MD, or Other Doctoral Degree.

The proportion of missing data for maternal intrusiveness ranged from 4.1% (10 months) to 18.8% (6 and 9 years); for CBCL-INT scores, these values ranged from 12.4% (36 months) to 22.0% (9 years). Little’s MCAR test confirmed that data were missing completely at random (X2=62.95, p=.407). We used multiple imputation (MI) within MPlus to account for missing data. MI produces unbiased results even with large proportions of missing data present (Madley-Dowd, Hughes, Tilling, & Heron, 2019). We ran 10 imputations with no auxiliary variables.

To test our first hypothesis, we ran three logistic and one linear regression, controlling for maternal education in all, using MPlus Version 8.1 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017): (1) intrusiveness at 5 months predicting intrusiveness at 10 months, (2) intrusiveness at 10 months predicting intrusiveness at 2 years, (3) intrusiveness at 2 years predicting intrusiveness at 3 years, and (4) intrusiveness at 2 years predicting child internalizing scores at age 3.

To assess for concurrent and bidirectional relationships, our second hypothesis, we conducted a four-wave cross-lagged panel model (Kessler & Greenberg, 1981; see Figure 2) in MPlus version 8.1 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). By including both autoregressive and cross-lagged effects, we controlled for preceding measurements of each construct in order to dispel the possibility that significant effects were simply a result of the variables being correlated at the previous timepoint. For our model building strategy, we initially tested our hypothesized bivariate model. Good model fit was determined by non-significant chi-square tests (X2), comparative fit index (CFI) values of greater than/equal to 0.90, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) values of less than/equal to 0.06, and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) values of less than/equal to 0.05 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Due to the transformation of intrusiveness into a binary variable, we used the WLSMV estimator of these values in MPlus, as it is a robust estimator and does not assume normality (Brown, 2006). After estimating the uncorrected model, we introduced maternal education as a control variable in the final model.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

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Final corrected model with standardized solutions, controlling for maternal education level at each timepoint. Significant pathways are represented by solid lines; non-significant pathways are represented by dashed lines. Single-headed arrows indicate predictive paths, and double-headed arrows indicate correlated variables.

Results

Descriptive Sample Characteristics

Means, standard deviations, and proportions for the study variables are presented in Table 2. Average CBCL-Internalizing scores were below the clinical cutoff score of 70 at all timepoints, which is typical in community samples. The proportion of mothers displaying some intrusiveness was relatively moderate at younger ages (44–45%), increased at ages 2 and 3 (70–77%), dropped to 45% at age 4 years, and remained low-moderate thereafter. Zero-order correlations were calculated to inspect relationships among variables (see Table 2).

Primary Analyses

To address our first hypothesis that maternal intrusiveness would remain stable from 5 months to 3 years, and predict child internalizing symptoms at age 3 years, we ran a set of regression analyses, controlling for maternal education (Table 3). Results showed that mothers who displayed some intrusiveness at 5 months were no more or less likely to display some intrusiveness at 10 months; whereas mothers who displayed some intrusiveness at 10 months were 2.28 times more likely to display some intrusiveness at 2 years (p=0.018). Displaying some intrusiveness at 2 years did not predict intrusiveness nor children’s CBCL internalizing scores at age 3 years. Maternal education significantly predicted intrusiveness from ages 10 months to 2 years and ages 2 to 3 years but not from ages 5 months to 10 months.

Table 3.

Logistic/Linear Regression Coefficients Assessing Early Stability of Maternal Intrusiveness

Unstandardized Standardized
B SE 90% CI B p-value OR
 Logistic Regression
Intrusiveness 10 Months
 Intrusiveness 5 0.39 0.30 (−0.10, 0.88) 0.11 0.186 1.47
 Education Level 0.17 0.20 (−0.16, 0.50) 0.10 0.405 1.18
Intrusiveness 2 Years
 Intrusiveness 10 0.83 0.36 (0.23, 1.42) 0.21 0.018 2.28
 Education Level −0.47 0.20 (−0.80, −0.15) −0.27 0.012 0.45
Intrusiveness 3 Years
 Intrusiveness 2 0.60 0.36 (0.00, 1.21) 0.13 0.094 1.83
 Education Level −0.35 0.17 (−0.64, −0.07) −0.20 0.034 0.70
 Linear Regression
CBCL-INT 3 Years
 Intrusiveness 2 −0.01 1.64 (−2.71, 2.69) 0.00 0.998 -
 Education Level −1.75 0.73 (−2.95, −0.55) −0.21 0.016 -
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Note: Intrusiveness was binary coded: 0= none; 1= some intrusiveness observed; Education Level ranged from 1= Grade School to 7= PhD, MD, or Other Doctoral Degree.

Our second hypothesis predicted concurrent and bidirectional effects between maternal intrusiveness and child internalizing symptoms from ages 3 to 9 years. The hypothesized bivariate model fit the data very well (X2=13.70, df=12, p=0.320; RMSEA=0.02; CFI=0.99; SRMR=0.04; Table 4). Over time, CBCL-INT scores remained relatively stable. Intrusiveness was similarly stable from age 4 years to age 9, however the path from intrusiveness at age 3 to age 4 was not significant. Hypothesis 2 was partly confirmed, i.e., intrusiveness and CBCL-INT scores were significantly positively correlated at age 3 years. We then added maternal education as a control variable; model fit remained excellent (X2=14.57, df=12, p=0.266; RMSEA=0.03; CFI=0.99; SRMR=0.03; see Figure 2). While path coefficients within developmental domains remained stable in this final model, the relationship between intrusiveness and CBCL-INT scores became insignificant (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Unstandardized and Standardized Model Parameters for Final Uncorrected and Corrected Bidirectional Model (Figure 2)

Uncorrected Model Corrected Model
Unstandardized Standardized Unstandardized Standardized
B SE 90% CI B p-value R 2 B SE 90% CI B p-value R 2
Intrusiveness 3 Years 0.04
 Education Level −0.08 0.07 (−0.19, 0.03) −0.19 0.070
Intrusiveness 4 Years 0.04 0.11
 Intrusiveness 3 0.38 0.21 (0.03, 0.73) 0.17 0.064 0.30 0.24 (−0.10, 0.69) 0.13 0.273
 CBCL-INT 3 0.01 0.01 (−0.01, 0.03) 0.06 0.509 0.00 0.01 (−0.02, 0.02) 0.01 0.921
 Education Level - - - - - −0.27 0.10 (−0.43, −0.12) −0.28 0.002
Intrusiveness 6 Years 0.08 0.08
 Intrusiveness 4 0.28 0.13 (0.08, 0.05) 0.28 0.015 0.27 0.13 (0.05, 0.48) 0.27 0.027
 CBCL-INT 4 0.01 0.01 (−0.01, 0.02) 0.07 0.406 0.01 0.01 (−0.01, 0.03) 0.07 0.437
 Education Level - - - - - 0.02 0.11 (−0.16, 0.20) 0.02 0.862
Intrusiveness 9 Years 0.91 0.91
 Intrusiveness 6 3.17 1.77 (0.26, 6.08) 0.95 <.001 3.17 1.80 (0.22, 6.13) 0.95 <.001
 CBCL-INT 6 −0.01 0.03 (−0.06, 0.04) −0.03 0.676 −0.02 0.03 (−0.07, 0.04) −0.04 0.616
 Education Level - - - - - -0.19 0.25 (−0.59, 0.22) −0.06 0.379
CBCL-INT 3 Years 0.05
 Education Level −1.75 0.75 (−2.98, −0.52) −0.22 0.014
CBCL-INT 4 Years 0.46 0.47
 CBCL-INT 3 0.75 0.07 (0.64, 0.86) 0.69 <.001 0.75 0.07 (0.64, 0.86) 0.69 <.001
 Intrusiveness 3 −1.40 1.27 (−3.49, 0.69) −0.07 0.269 −1.40 1.27 (−3.48, 0.71) −0.07 0.980
 Education Level - - - - - −0.02 0.65 −1.09, 1.05 −0.00 0.318
CBCL-INT 6 Years 0.32 0.33
 CBCL-INT 4 0.55 0.06 (0.45, 0.66) 0.56 <.001 0.57 0.07 (0.46, 0.68) 0.58 <.001
 Intrusiveness 4 0.25 0.85 (−1.14, 1.64) 0.03 0.764 0.51 0.93 (−1.02, 2.04) 0.06 0.583
 Education Level - - - - - 0.50 0.84 (−0.89, 1.89) 0.06 0.551
CBCL-INT 9 Years 0.41 0.43
 CBCL-INT 6 0.64 0.08 (0.52, 0.77) 0.64 <.001 0.65 0.08 (0.53, 0.78) 0.65 <.001
 Intrusiveness 6 −0.31 0.74 (−1.52, 0.91) −0.03 0.683 −0.23 0.74 (−1.44, 0.98) −0.03 0.760
 Education Level - - - - - 0.61 0.61 (−0.39, 1.62) 0.07 0.316
Correlations R SE p-value R SE p-value
Intrusiveness & CBCL-INT 3 Years 0.19 0.07 0.006 0.15 0.09 0.082
Intrusiveness & CBCL-INT 4 Years −0.21 0.12 0.079 −0.23 0.14 0.094
Intrusiveness & CBCL-INT 6 Years −0.05 0.11 0.623 −0.06 0.11 0.598
Intrusiveness & CBCL-INT 9 Years 0.76 0.48 0.116 0.79 0.50 0.117
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Note: Linear regression paths when outcome is continuous such as CBCL-INT scores, logistic regression when outcome is binary such as Intrusiveness; Intrusiveness was binary coded: 0= none; 1= some intrusiveness observed; Education Level ranged from 1= Grade School, to 7= PhD, MD, or Other Doctoral Degree.

Discussion

The main purpose of this novel study was to examine maternal intrusiveness consistently from infancy to middle childhood, as well as to elucidate any bidirectional processes that co-occur between intrusive parenting and child internalizing symptomatology. Our findings highlight two developmental cascades of child internalizing symptoms and maternal intrusiveness. Maternal intrusiveness was related to child internalizing symptoms at age three, but only when not accounting for variation in maternal education.

While few studies have assessed the stability of maternal intrusiveness over time, work on the stability of parenting behaviors suggests that parental control remains relatively stable across childhood (Holden & Miller, 1999; Jaekel, Wolke, & Chernova, 2012). Similarly, child self-report measures of parenting such as the Parental Bonding Instrument have demonstrated stability in maternal overprotection over a span of 20 years when recalled retrospectively later in life (Wilhelm, Niven, Parker, & Hadzi-Pavlovic, 2004). The lack of early stability in the current study may reflect maternal adaptation to rapid child developmental change that then steadies in later childhood. Additionally, these data highlight the importance of differentiating between overall group and within-person stability. Although the overall percentage of intrusive mothers remained relatively similar between the 5 and 10 months visits, the lack of stability during this period may point to more individual change. Future work would benefit from more explicitly distinguishing between the two.

An additional important finding of this study was that the proportion of mothers displaying some intrusiveness increased considerably between the age 2 and 3 year visits. Around age 2, there is high developmental variability in self-regulatory skills (i.e., “terrible twos”), including the emergence of increased levels of externalizing behaviors (Alink et al., 2006) that may pull for more intrusive parenting. Then, as child social competence and self-regulation generally increase with age, maternal control is expected to adaptively decrease accordingly (Feldman & Eidelman, 2009; Landry, Smith, Swank, & Miller-Loncar, 2000). Thus, at age 4, we may have captured developmentally appropriate reductions in maternal intrusiveness that correspond to typical increases in areas of child self-regulating abilities beyond emotion regulation (i.e., Denham, 1998; Zeytinoglu, Calkins, Swingler, & Leerkes, 2017). Increases in behavioral regulation at this time may prove beneficial to children during structured tasks, such as those in the present study. Additionally, it appears that intrusiveness, as defined in this study and in much of the developmental literature, may incorporate components of both behavioral control and psychological control, making it more akin to behavioral control at low levels and therefore less detrimental to child outcomes. Therefore, as parents likely have to provide more behavioral direction to children during structured tasks, this increase in observed intrusive behaviors at age 2 may also provide evidence for this alternative interpretation of this construct.

Our hypothesis that there would be concurrent and cross-lagged bidirectional effects between maternal intrusiveness and child internalizing symptoms was partially supported in our uncorrected model, but disappeared when we controlled for maternal education. This is important, as it suggests that variation in mothers’ educational backgrounds are moderating or mediating the relationship between intrusiveness and internalizing symptoms, warranting future research. Indeed, Cooper-Vince, Pincus, and Comer (2014) found that family financial means, of which education is a close proxy, moderated relationships between intrusiveness and anxiety, bolstering support for our findings. Aside from its relation to socioeconomic status, education may also have unique effects; the association between maternal education and child mental health has persisted even when income is taken into account (Bøe, Øverland, Lunder, & Hysing, 2012). Mothers with higher levels of education may have enhanced problem-solving abilities with their children (Neitzel & Stright, 2004), and be more skillful at scaffolding behavior (Carr & Pike, 2012). Therefore, mothers with higher levels of education may be better able to navigate interactions with her child without engaging in intrusive behaviors, which in turn may buffer against the development of internalizing symptoms. A closer look at different study samples’ composition with regard to educational background may help cross-validate previous, current, and future findings.

We also replicated these findings by Cooper-Vince et al. (2014), who found no prospective relationships between child anxiety and maternal intrusiveness, suggesting that maternal intrusiveness may have a maintenance rather than causal effect on child anxiety, in particular. Attention bias towards threat may be one mechanism through which internalizing symptoms are maintained, as infants of intrusive mothers have been found to display distinct brain activity in response to angry voices (Huffmeijer, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Gervain, 2020). Similarly, the association between maternal intrusiveness and child internalizing symptoms may be moderated by child factors such as executive functioning (Gueron-Sela, Bedford, Wagner, & Propper, 2018), which may speak to other maintaining factors. It is also possible that the lack of prospective relationships is due to the low clinical levels of internalizing symptoms in this sample, or suggests that a child’s influence on intrusive behavior begins and persists from an earlier timepoint at which we did not have a measure of internalizing symptoms. Additionally, as intrusiveness does not occur in isolation from other more positive parenting dimensions (Brady-Smith et al., 2013), low levels of intrusiveness may represent attempts at scaffolding, or mothers who are engaging in subtle instances of this behavior may be compensating in other areas such as warmth or responsiveness. Alternatively, our consistent definition of intrusiveness may have precluded us from identifying ways that intrusive parenting may manifest in subtly different ways in early to middle childhood.

The current study has limitations that should be noted. Primarily, the distribution and resulting dichotomization of maternal intrusiveness significantly reduced the information available to us regarding this behavior. As many mothers within the “some intrusiveness” group displayed only a few instances of intrusiveness, it may be that low levels of intrusive parenting are not harmful for a child’s emotional development, resulting in few significant relationships between the two constructs. In addition, mother-child interactions were assessed in one or two tasks at each age, while multiple interaction tasks may be required to capture the nuance of maternal intrusiveness displayed in a laboratory setting. Such an approach might elicit a spectrum of intrusive behaviors, similar to findings of self-report measures, which typically show stronger relationships with child pathology (McLeod et al., 2007). We also only analyzed relationships between maternal behaviors and internalizing symptoms, so we may have missed unique relationships that may manifest through paternal behaviors. Finally, due to the need to make tasks age-appropriate, we did not have consistent tasks over time, and all of the included tasks were structured in their goals. As intrusive parenting is theorized to be more detrimental in the context of unstructured tasks (e.g., Rubin et al., 2001), this may explain the lack of relationships between intrusiveness and child internalizing symptoms in the current study.

Because data were collected from a community sample, rates of children with clinical levels of internalizing symptoms were low. Future longitudinal work should be conducted with high risk or clinical samples to enhance the likelihood of detecting statistically significant and meaningful relationships between the constructs of interest. Our sample was also not particularly diverse, as mothers were predominantly white and educated. Therefore, it is unclear to what extent these results would generalize to other demographic groups.

Despite these limitations, our study has considerable strengths. The seven-wave longitudinal design allowed us to test for temporal precedence and causal relationships. Additionally, this study was the first, to our knowledge, to consistently trace intrusiveness across infancy into middle childhood. The significant time span coupled with our consistent definition of intrusiveness across developmentally appropriate interaction tasks allowed us to capture variation in maternal intrusiveness across development in our community sample.

Conclusion

In summary, our study is one of few that have longitudinally examined relationships between maternal intrusiveness and child internalizing symptoms. We showed that changes in early maternal intrusiveness may reflect important developmental periods in which self-regulation skills are developing in children. We also showed that maternal reports of child internalizing behavior are consistent from ages 3 to 9. In this community sample, the association between maternal intrusiveness and child internalizing behavior at age 3 disappeared once maternal education was included.

Examination of links between intrusiveness and internalizing symptoms might be enhanced in future studies with community samples by including more wide-ranging assessments of maternal intrusiveness than employed in our study, a definition of intrusiveness that is adaptive across development, and/or a scale that can capture a more evenly distributed range of intrusiveness scores. Self-report parenting measures appear to robustly capture the occurrence of intrusive parenting. Combining self-report with a wider range of mother-child interaction tasks, especially tasks representative of daily interactions between mothers and their older children, may yield a more encompassing view of the potential impact of maternal intrusiveness on child internalizing symptoms. Overall, our study adds important information to the existing body of research on maternal parenting behaviors and their associations with internalizing symptoms in children, emphasizing the need to think developmentally about children’s outcomes.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grant R01 HD049878 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) awarded to Martha Ann Bell. The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NICHD or the National Institutes of Health. We sincerely thank Susan D. Calkins and her team at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their many years of collaboration on the subcontract of this project. We are grateful to the families in Blacksburg VA and Greensboro NC for their long-term commitment to participating in our study.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Footnotes

Conflicts of Interest

None to report.

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