Impacts of parentification due to maternal depressive symptoms on the psychological symptomatology and interpersonal relationship quality of their young children: Protective role of father involvement

Maternal depression/depressive symptoms have deleterious impacts on children. Although previous studies emphasized the impacts of maternal depression/depressive symptoms on child's symptomatology and interpersonal relationships, there is surprisingly no research about the role of father involvement on parentification due to maternal depressive symptoms and child's symptomatology and interpersonal relationship quality. The purpose of current study is to investigate the role of fathers on the consequences of parentification due to maternal depressive symptoms with regard to adolescents' psychological symptomatology and interpersonal relationship quality. Of 238 mother- adolescent dyads, adolescents completed Parentification Inventory (PI), Father Involvement Scale (FIS), Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), Scales of Dimensions of Interpersonal Relationships (SDIR) and their mother completed State-Trait Depression Inventory (STDI). The results demonstrated that although maternal depressive symptoms did not significantly predict parentification level of adolescents, it significantly predicted adolescents' psychological symptomatology and interpersonal relationship quality. In addition, while father involvement had negative significant effect on parentification level of adolescents, both father involvement and parentification and their interaction had no significant effect on the adolescents' symptomatology and interpersonal relationship quality. The current study contributed to our understanding of how maternal depressive symptoms have deleterious impacts on adolescents' symptomatology and interpersonal relationship quality. Also, it pointed out the protective role of father involvement on adolescents who might be at risk for parentification.