Maternal warmth and depressive symptoms in children: The mediating role of children's responses to positive affect and the moderating role of peer emotion regulation

Abstract

Although poor negative emotion regulation is a known risk factor for childhood depression, the potential role of positive emotion regulation—particularly in interaction with maternal warmth and peer socialization in Chinese cultural contexts—remains understudied. This study explored whether children's responses to positive affect may mediate the relationship between maternal warmth and depressive symptoms, and whether peer emotion regulation might moderates these pathways. Participants included 489 Chinese children (M age = 11.06 years, SD = 1.22; 51.7 % female) who completed self-report measures of all main variables. Results showed a direct negative association between maternal warmth and child depressive symptoms, with two potential indirect pathways: positive rumination appeared linked to reduced symptoms, while dampening was associated with increased symptoms. Peer emotion regulation seemed to moderate only the positive mediation pathway, with the buffering effect of positive rumination on depressive symptoms appearing stronger when peer regulation was high. In contrast, the direct protective effect of maternal warmth was more pronounced at lower levels of peer regulation. These preliminary findings suggest that both children's responses to positive affect and peer emotional regulation may influence the extent to which maternal warmth is associated with reduced depressive symptoms. The results tentatively support the value of family-based interventions that target maternal warmth and adaptive positive rumination, especially when combined with peer-supported emotion regulation strategies, as a multi-system approach to alleviating childhood depressive symptoms.