People say child-rearing gets easier once a child starts elementary school. The findings released on the 8th by a research team led by Dr. Jung Min-young of the Cognitive Science Research Group at the Korea Brain Research Institute (KBRI) say otherwise. The team said it had identified the neurobiological process by which parenting stress and depression affect the structure and function of parents' brains. It means that complaints of emotional strain have now been confirmed in brain imaging measures as well.
The study covered 167 mothers of school-age children who had no psychiatric diagnosis. The children's average age was about 9.2. All of the mothers were primary caregivers.
The team combined MRI brain imaging measures with the results of detailed psychological testing that included a standardized parenting stress inventory, a depression scale and an anxiety scale, and analyzed them together. The design was intended to find connections that could not be detected by looking at psychological test scores alone or brain images alone.
The findings emerged in the left entorhinal cortex. Parents with severe depression had a smaller surface area in this region than parents with little or no depression, and weaker functional connectivity with other regions. It is an area involved in memory and emotional processing.
In the statistical model analysis, parenting stress did not directly alter the brain. The amount of structural and functional brain change produced by stress varied according to the degree of the parent's depression. Depression was found to serve as a mediator in between.
Until now, research in this field has concentrated on early stress and depression in mothers around childbirth or in parents of infants and toddlers. The underlying premise was that the burden diminishes as the child grows. This study put that premise up for testing. The paper's first author is KBRI researcher Jung Yong-jeon, and the work was carried out with support from KBRI's basic research program, the National Center for Mental Health and the National Research Foundation of Korea, and was published in the international journal 'Journal of Affective Disorders'.
The fact that all of the study's participants were mothers limits how broadly the results can be read. Whether the same pathway operates in fathers or co-caregivers is left for follow-up research to answer.
A survey of Seoul residents conducted around the same time revealed burdens on the everyday side. Asked whether their neighborhood was suitable for raising children, close to seven in ten said it was, and about three did not agree. Asked whether local childcare policies help in daily life, positive responses were slightly ahead, but negative responses also topped 40%, splitting the answers within the margin of error. Residents gave their neighborhood environment generous marks while splitting in half on how much they felt the policies.
Children's education costs were named the top burden, and housing costs the second. Care-related items combined came to 39%. Lee Taek-soo, head of the polling firm Realmeter, said that on the question of what support is needed, child-rearing and housing cost support and an expansion of national and public childcare facilities together recorded the highest figures within the margin of error.
Since the start of its ninth popularly elected administration, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has been increasing the number of emergency and gap-filling childcare institutions and running a project to expand the number of beneficiaries of 'Seoul Learn', an education welfare policy, by 50,000. It is an approach that eases the burden with money and facilities.
The KBRI study points to a different response. If child-rearing burdens deepen depression and depression leaves traces on the brain, parents' mental health should be on the checklist for care policy. Expanding childcare facilities and managing caregivers' depression are both needed.
This study confirmed that even after children reach school age, child-rearing burdens affect brain measures by way of parents' depression. The team said caregivers' mental health must be examined as well.
