Maternal differential treatment and adult children's well-being when mothers have cognitive impairment

Objectives

Our goal was to examine the role of perceptions of mothers' cognitive impairment (CI) in shaping the impact of maternal differential treatment on adult children's psychological well-being.

Background

The detrimental impact of mothers' differential treatment on adult children's psychological well-being has been well-documented; however, little is known about whether this association is moderated by mothers' CI.

Methods

Mixed-methods data were collected from 287 adult children (mean age = 59 years) nested within 142 families as part of the Within-Family Differences Study. Analytic approaches were multilevel regression and in-depth qualitative analyses.

Results

Perceiving oneself as the child to whom one's mother was most emotionally close or with whom she had the most conflict was associated with lower psychological well-being among adult children who did not report that their mothers had symptoms of CI; however, such perceptions were not associated with well-being when children perceived that mothers showed symptoms of CI. Qualitative analyses revealed that when children reported that mothers did not have CI, children attributed their greater closeness and conflict to unique characteristics of themselves or their mother–child ties. However, when children perceived that mothers showed symptoms of CI, attributions for mothers' differentiation focused on contextual factors surrounding mothers' cognitive health, and thus did not reflect on the children themselves. Thus, the negative impact of perceptions of mothers' differential treatment on well-being was muted.

Conclusion

This study sheds light on conditions under which perceptions of maternal differential treatment affect adult children's psychological well-being, and the role of cognitive health in these processes.