Prospective studies document the direct and indirect effects of early caregiving experiences on internalizing symptoms in adulthood. Moffitt and colleagues (2007), for example, found that maltreatment between ages 3-11 increases the risk for adult clinical depression and anxiety diagnoses. The adulthood follow-up of the Patterns of Child Rearing sample (Sears, Maccoby, & Levin, 1957) found that early parental warmth positively predicted marital and social functioning at age 41, which in turn predicted concurrent psychological health (Franz, Weinberger, & McClelland, 1991). Overbeek and colleagues (2007) found that low parent-child relationship quality promoted a pathway toward lower romantic quality in the late 30s, which in turn was associated with greater concurrent anxious-depressed symptoms.
