A major new study has challenged the idea that parent mental health problems can lead to school attendance problems by illustrating that maternal mental health is more affected by rather than responsible for children having difficulties attending school.
Poor school attendance has been marked as a serious issue in the UK with the rise of persistent absence, missing more than 10% of school days, nearly doubling since the COVID-19 pandemic. Poor school attendance has been shown to lead to life-long issues with further education and employment.
The study from Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Bristol and University of Liverpool, published in the Archives of Women’s Mental Health proposes that the interventions to solve the school attendance crisis should focus on supporting parents rather than blaming them.
This is the first study that has provided evidence suggesting that maternal mental health is affected by child school attendance, rather than vice versa.
The research used two ongoing population-based birth cohorts - Children of the 90s, also known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), an ongoing population-based birth cohort beginning in pregnancy in the early 1990s with 14,000 women and the Wirral Child Health and Development Study (WCHADS).
The ALSPAC cohort, based in the South West of England, explored whether eight-year-olds were more likely to have mothers with depression before or after the school attendance difficulties emerged. The WCHADS cohort, based in the North West of England, showed that attendance-related difficulties at age 7 were associated with higher maternal depression symptoms at age 9 whereas maternal depression symptoms at age 7 were not associated with attendance-related difficulties at age 9.
Dr Jen McGahan, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University and lead author of the study, said: “We found that children who struggled with school attendance were more likely to have mothers who later reported symptoms of depression, while maternal depression was not a strong predictor of later attendance difficulties. While this doesn’t exclude the possibility that the association also operates in both directions, or negate the importance of pre-existing maternal depression for children, it adds a new dimension to understanding the impact of ongoing school attendance problems on the whole family’
“Importantly, this pattern was consistent across both studies. We also found that different types of attendance difficulties, including separation anxiety and school avoidance, had similar impacts on later maternal mental health. This suggests that it is the ongoing challenge of supporting a child who is struggling to attend school, rather than the specific reason for the difficulty, that may place the greatest strain on parents.”