Family of origin holds powerful sway over a child’s development. That much is clear. In adulthood, relationships with a spouse or partner take center stage. That is also well-established. But a recent study reveals that the latter doesn’t necessarily overtake and replace the former.
Led by Iowa State University researcher Megan Gilligan, the study found that tension with one’s parents, particularly his or her mom, and siblings remains associated with symptoms of depression as an adult. The research, published in the September issue of Social Sciences, found all three relationships — mother, siblings and spouse or partner — have similar effects on depression risk, and none is stronger than the others.
Gilligan, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State, says that family scholars tend to focus on spousal relationships, with the assumption that as adults we leave the other relationships behind. “But you don’t. You carry those with you,” she says.
Mothers and daughters appear to have the most significant and potentially troubling relationship. Her research shows tension between mothers and adult children predicted depression for daughters more strongly than it did for sons. Gender did not make a difference in relationships with spouses and siblings, however, which Gilligan finds sensible, based on earlier research that mothers and daughters in adulthood have the closest — and the most conflicting — relationships. These can become even more intense when adult children, most often daughters, start providing more care to their aging parents, especially their mothers.
[Read: Can Rigid Gender Stereotyping Increase a Child’s Risk of Depression?]
A ‘Big Contribution’
Gilligan’s research generally focuses on parent and sibling relationships. “I wanted to think of those relationships simultaneously — that is, how we experience all these different networks contacting us. There is a growing body of research for later life, but no one looked at these multiple relationships [in midlife], which we know affect psychological well-being individually.”
Her research looked at 495 adult children within 254 families. It measured depressive symptoms and tension among family members through survey questions. Gilligan and her colleagues expected all three relationships would predict depressive symptoms, but the effect would vary depending on the strength of the relationship. Instead, they found no significant difference between spouses and original family members.
That is important, Gilligan says, so that family therapists know to ask about all sources of family stress instead of focusing just on a romantic partner or spouse. That is a “big contribution” to mental health practitioners, says Ellen Braaten, associate director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. “It broadens the reasons why family relationships may cause different sorts of stress and fills a gap in the research when we think about more complex family relationships and also in midlife,” she says. “The other thing worth mentioning is that a lot of research looking at the association between depression and family relationships looks at how the depressed person affects the family, but not how the family affects the person becoming depressed.”
[Read: What Do We Know About Genetic Links to Depression?]
Midlife Crises?
We like to believe that midlife is more secure and stable than earlier life stages. But Gilligan argues that midlife is a potentially difficult and stressful time of change and transition. Children are growing up and emptying the nest. Aging parents require more attention, and this is when siblings come back together to prepare for their parents’ elder care, she says. If those sibling bonds are strained to begin with, “it’s a pivotal time when these family relationships might be experiencing more tension, more strain, more discord,” Gilligan says. That can be compounded by the understanding that, as other research has shown, adults in the middle of their lives often react more strongly to family conflict than they do later in life.
Gilligan hopes that, by filling this gap in understanding about midlife relationships and knowing the potential for greater conflict with mothers or siblings, family therapists will be better able to address the consequences of strained relationships on psychological well-being. “When we think of marriage and family therapy, if we isolate marriage and not put it in the context of other relationships, we might be missing other sources of stress and tension. It may be better to assess the larger family network when working with families and couples,” she says.
Braaten says this line of thinking “is pretty new. Of course, this seems intuitive, but the best research usually does seem intuitive after the fact.” She says that it is critical to be aware of these family dynamics. “As you get older, life throws more at you,” she says. “As psychologists, we see lots of families, but we don’t think enough about caregivers in midlife as struggling with their own mental health.”
[Read: Is Depression a Disease?]
Those under this kind of stress, especially between mothers and daughters, need to learn how to decrease it. “Self-care is extremely helpful, through exercise, getting enough sleep and from other forms of social support,” she says. “If you are not getting support from your family, you need it from outside the family system.” Family therapy and cognitive behavioral techniques, she says, are good places to start.
And just knowing that this kind of tension is not unusual can help. “Sometimes people feel like, ‘Why am I still having these family dynamics? Why can’t I just get over it?'” Gilligan says. “But having tension in these relationships is really common. You should not feel something is wrong with you or your family. You are no different from hundreds of families we have been looking at.”
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How Much Can Family Relationships Contribute to Your Risk of Depression? originally appeared on usnews.com
