Exploring Links Between Social Avoidance and Socio-Emotional Functioning in Early Childhood: The Moderating Role of Maternal Depressive Symptoms

The goal of the present study was to examine the moderating role of maternal depression in the links between social avoidance and indices of socio-emotional functioning among young children in mainland China. Participants were N = 211 children aged from 4–6 years (112 boys, 99 girls, Mage = 4.90 years, SD = 0.44) recruited from two public kindergartens in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. Multi-source assessments were employed, with mothers reporting their own symptoms of depression, as well as rating children’s social withdrawal (i.e., social avoidance, shyness, unsociability), and teachers assessing indices of children’s socio-emotional functioning at school (i.e., asocial behaviors, interpersonal skills, peer exclusion, internalizing problems). Among the results, social avoidance was positively associated with asocial behaviors, peer exclusion, and internalizing problems, as well as negatively associated with interpersonal skills. Moreover, as hypothesized, symptoms of maternal depression were found to exacerbate the relations between social avoidance and each of these outcome variables. Results are discussed in terms of the etiology and implications of social avoidance among young children in mainland China.