Maternal warmth in early childhood shapes health through social safety

Parental warmth and affection in early childhood can have life-long physical and mental health benefits for children, and new UCLA Health research points to an important underlying process: children's sense of social safety.

The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, found that children who experience more maternal warmth at age 3 have more positive perceptions of social safety at age 14, which in turn predicts better physical and mental health outcomes at age 17.

Greater maternal warmth, defined as more praise, positive tone of voice and acts of affection, has previously been shown to predict better health across the lifespan. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations have been unclear, said Dr. Jenna Alley, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at UCLA.

One possibility is that interpersonal experiences early in life affect whether children perceive the social world as safe vs. threatening, accepting vs. rejecting and supportive vs. dismissive. Over time, these perceptions develop into mental frameworks, called social safety schemas, which help individuals interpret, organize, and make predictions about social situations and relationships.

"Your social safety schema is the lens through which you view every social interaction you have," Alley said. "In a way, these schemas represent your core beliefs about the world, what you can expect from it, and how you fit in."

The UCLA Health study is the first longitudinal research to track how maternal warmth in early childhood is related to perceptions of social safety in mid adolescence, and how perceptions of social safety influence physical and mental health outcomes as youth near adulthood.

Warmth from fathers was not studied because there was insufficient data from fathers in the dataset used in the study from the Millenium Cohort Study. Parental warmth care has been historically overlooked in research, Alley said, although preliminary research suggests that the quality of care that fathers provide also predicts child outcomes and should thus be a focus of future research.

Researchers used data from more than 8,500 children who were assessed as part of long-term Millennium Cohort Study in the United Kingdom. Independent evaluators visited the children's homes at age 3 and assessed their mother's warmth (praise, positive tone of voice) and harshness (physically restraining or grabbing the child). At age 14, social safety schemas were measured with questions such as "Do I have family and friends who help me feel safe, secure and happy?" The children then reported on their overall physical health, psychiatric problems and psychological distress at age 17.

Alley and her colleagues found:

• Children with mothers exhibiting more maternal warmth in early childhood perceived the world as being more socially safe at age 14 and had fewer physical health problems at age 17.
• Children who perceived the world as more socially safe at age 14 in turn had fewer physical health problems, less psychological distress and fewer psychiatric problems at age 17.
• Children's social safety schemas fully explained the association between maternal warmth and how psychologically distressed youth were at age 17.
• In contrast, maternal harshness did not predict children's perceptions of social safety at 14, or their physical or mental health at age 17.

These are the first results we know of showing that maternal warmth can affect the health and wellbeing of kids years later by influencing how they think about the social world. That is a powerful message, because although early-life circumstances are not always easy to change, we can help youth view others and their future in a more positive light."

Dr. George Slavich, senior author of the study and Director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at UCLA

Alley said the fact that maternal warmth was found to more strongly affect adolescent health than maternal harshness was important because it has implications for how to best intervene. Based on the study findings, for example, enhancing a teenager's sense of safety, by way of a public health campaign or intervention, may be more effective than focusing on reducing perceptions of harshness, and it can potentially have a positive impact on health outcomes for years to come, even after poor maternal care has been experienced.

"The findings tell the story of resilience. Namely, it's not just about stopping the negative things like poor care but about putting effort toward enhancing the positives like warmth and safety," Alley said. "It also important to know that people who have experienced poor care during childhood are not doomed; if we focus on their perceptions of the world, we can greatly improve their lives."

"The message is clear," said Slavich. "Perceiving the social world as a socially safe, inclusive place to be really matters for physical and mental health, and this knowledge can be used to develop better interventions and public health campaigns designed to enhance resilience across the lifespan."

Additional studies are needed to determine how maternal warmth affects children in other contexts outside the United Kingdom, as well as how health care providers and policymakers may improve perceptions of social safety to enhance youth health outcomes.

The study was co-authored by Drs. Jenna Alley, Summer Mengelkoch and George Slavich of UCLA, and Dr. Dimitris Tsomokos of the University College London.

Funding

Funding for the work was provided by grant #OPR21101 from the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research/California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine (Jenna Alley, Summer Mengelkoch, and George Slavich) and the Alphablocks Nursery School (Dimitris Tsomokos). The findings and conclusions in the article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of these organizations, which had no role in designing or planning this study; in collecting, analyzing, or interpreting the data; in writing the article; or in deciding to submit the article for publication.