Research over many decades has considered the crucial role of maternal psychological distress (e.g., depression, anxiety) for children's psychological adjustment (externalizing and internalizing problems), suggesting bidirectional influences over time. However, little is known about the extent to which household chaos (e.g., noise, disorganization, lack of calm) may mediate this mutual association, despite an understanding that chaos is a powerful stressor in the home. Conducting secondary data analysis in a large scale, prospective longitudinal study of families with children-the U.K.'s Millennium Cohort Study-we accounted for stability in both maternal psychological distress and children's internalizing and externalizing problems and examined the extent to which household chaos mediated the mutual association between maternal psychological distress and children's behaviors. Using what we term a mutual-mediation model, we found that both maternal psychological distress and children's adjustment problems predicted household chaos at Age 5, and in turn, that chaos predicted maternal psychological distress and child adjustment problems at Age 7. We found a dominance of children's externalizing problems in the prediction of household chaos, and all pathways were strongest for maternal psychological distress and externalizing problems compared to child internalizing problems. Our findings suggest that research would be well-minded to consider both child and parent effects on household chaos, as well as its mediation potential. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

母亲心理困扰与儿童适应问题：家庭混乱的调解。

几十年来的研究已经考虑了母亲心理困扰（例如抑郁、焦虑）对儿童心理调整（外化和内化问题）的关键作用，表明随着时间的推移会产生双向影响。然而，人们对家庭混乱（例如噪音、杂乱、缺乏平静）在多大程度上可能调解这种相互联系知之甚少，尽管人们知道混乱是家庭中强大的压力源。对有孩子的家庭进行大规模、前瞻性纵向研究——英国的千禧年队列研究——进行二次数据分析，我们考虑了母亲心理困扰和儿童内化和外化问题的稳定性，并研究了家庭混乱在多大程度上介导了相互关联母亲心理困扰与儿童行为之间的关系。使用我们所谓的相互中介模型，我们发现母亲的心理困扰和儿童的适应问题都预示着 5 岁时的家庭混乱，反过来，混乱又预示着母亲的心理困扰和儿童 7 岁时的适应问题。儿童外化问题在家庭混乱预测中的作用，与儿童内化问题相比，所有途径对于母亲心理困扰和外化问题的影响最强。我们的研究结果表明，研究应该明智地考虑儿童和父母对家庭混乱的影响及其调解潜力。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。