ABSTRACT
Depression is the most common psychopathological condition that affects the majority of women, particularly mothers. Not only does this condition predict negative outcomes in maternal lives, but this applies also to their children. Numerous studies have revealed that maternal depressive symptoms could impede the Executive Function (EF), a higher mental function that controls behaviour, cognition, and emotion of their children. Nonetheless, an inconsistency was found in the results of studies about the role of maternal depressive symptoms in predicting the EF of preschoolers because such studies failed to take the role of the father figure into consideration. This study aims to assess the contribution of maternal depression and father involvement to predicting the EF of preschool children. As many as 101 children aged 4–6 and their respective parents were involved. Several EF tests were performed on the children, while a maternal depressive symptoms self-report scale and a father involvement questionnaire were given to the mother and the father respectively. The results show that maternal depressive symptoms was negatively related to the EF performances of children after controlling child’s gender and age, maternal work status, and family’s socioeconomic level. This study points out the importance of the maternal psychological condition while targeting interventions for improving the EF of preschoolers.
