Comments on: The Link Between Mothers’ and Children’s Mental Health

By: Elizabeth R.

Elizabeth R. — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:38:23 +0000

And will they be studying the effects of a father’s mental health on a child too? Or is all the guilt and responsibility going to be squarely placed on mom’s shoulders as usual regarding how kids turn out?

By: Marty

Marty — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:07:57 +0000

Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Truth hurts, girl. I know it. I grew up with three of them and they were all nuts.

I ain’t moving with the times. The times should have stayed right where they were. They were just fine when mothering was all a woman did.

By: Yolanda

Yolanda — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:50:41 +0000

Only the ones that married you Marty LOL.

That was a very general remark about women. Move with the times, dude! That isn’t cool.

By: Marty

Marty — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:54:32 +0000

That’s stacking the decks against them poor kids from the start. They don’t choose what mother they get.

Women are crazy anyway.

By: soldy

soldy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:26:20 +0000

This is common sense. We learn from our parents and emulate them until we’re old enough to choose our own way forward. Of course we learn from them how to act. Kids can’t differentiate until much older what is normal behavior and what isn’t. The saying ‘a chip off the old block’ didn’t come out of thin air yesterday.

By: Reid

Reid — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:05:19 +0000

Our parents make us who we are. The attitudes and behaviors that we learn from them are most likely the ones that are going to stay with us for a lifetime. That does not make it difficult to believe at all that a mother’s mental health status would affect that of her children. But then again you get those crazy off the wall cases of everything seeming perfectly normal at home and then the kids just end up out of control. Those are te ones that always just leave me scratching my head and saying where did that come from.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:20:07 +0000

so is this suggesting that nature still plays a role in this, or is it simply that this is the environment that the child is raised in and this is all he knows?

By: Ryder

Ryder — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:43:48 +0000

this goes back to the idea that systems therapist have known for a long time, change the system and the parts of the system will change accordingly. It’s also something many child therapists are aware of.
the difficulty in all of this is getting the parent, who often sees the child as the problem, to do their own therapy.