Childhood is supposed to be a time of lightness, where adults carry the worries of the world and there is freedom to learn and enjoy the best of life. However, since COVID we know the incidence of depression in children has escalated with a meta-analysis of Chinese primary school children showing that 17.2% showed depressive symptoms. For them, the worries of the world weighed heavily.
Where to Begin?
Understanding depression as an ‘inside’ condition makes treatment easy. Like other illnesses, medication seems to be the obvious solution. However empirical studies have clearly demonstrated that parental positive and negative emotional expressiveness are associated with children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms and emotional adjustment. A more detailed understanding of the interlocking subsystems which form a family that may contribute to depression in children is important to guide the practitioner’s enquiry and intervention.
A Study of Chinese Children
Authors Wang et al (2025) were interested to explore distal factors, characteristics of parents, as they exert influence on the child through proximal factors, the daily interactions of parent and child. 403 Chinese families were assessed, through a parent completed Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire and Child–Parent Relationship Scale to assess their emotional expressiveness and parent–child relationship, while children reported their depression by using the CES-D scale. These were repeated six months later.
What Did They Find?
The ‘results showed that both paternal and maternal positive emotional expressiveness were indirectly related to their children’s depression through their own conflict with them. Conversely, parental negative emotional expressiveness was associated with not only their own relationship with their child, but also their partners’ conflict with the child, and further influences children’s depression through mother–child conflict.’ These findings support the evidence for predictable pathways that manifest as childhood depression, from parental characteristics to daily interactions, which become self-reinforcing recursive loops.
What Does This Mean for Practitioners?
Confidently understanding these dynamics supports approaches that do not locate the problem in the child or blame parents but rather seek to understand the context that has produced this unhappy arrangement. Rather than viewing a parent’s negative emotional expressiveness as a character fault we need to explore the milieu in which this occurs. Is the family living with broader social and economic conditions that render them less advantaged than others in their community? Are they experiencing housing insecurity, poverty, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction, major mental illness, or violence? Is the parent replaying the parenting they experienced or struggling to manage illness or disability? Are they isolated or engaged in difficult unsupportive relationships? Any or all these factors leave the adult less capable of positive and effective parenting and direct attention to the need for practical, emotional, and socio-relational intervention.
This perspective encourages us to look beyond the individual, sad child, and irritable parent to seek other solutions that encourage all who have an investment in the child and family to do their part to chase away the black dog.
Wang, P., Qiao, L., Zhang, Wu, Q., Yang, C., Lin, X. (2025) Parental Emotional Expressiveness Affects Primary School Children’s Depression: Indirect Pathway via Parent–Child Dyadic Subsystem. Family Process, Vol 64,1
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