Abstract Background Early exposure to maternal depression can increase risk for offspring mental health problems across the lifespan. Less is known about the transdiagnostic pathways through which maternal depression influences offspring mental health risk in young adulthood. This pre‐registered study tested the prospective associations of maternal depression (total exposure and instability) with offspring mental health in young adulthood and evaluated adolescent emotion dynamics as transdiagnostic mechanisms. Methods This study used data from the Future Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; n = 4898). Maternal depression was assessed when children were 1, 3, 5, and 9 years old and offspring young adult depression and anxiety was assessed at age 22 with structured clinical interviews. Adolescent daily and biweekly positive and negative emotions were assessed in two Future of Families and Child Wellbeing study substudies ( n range = 513‐1049) when offspring were 15 years old. Informed by theory and past research, we calculated variability, instability, and inertia to assess emotion dynamics and instability to assess maternal depression dynamics. We tested study aims using logistic regression, multivariate regression, and mediation models. Results Total exposure to maternal depression predicted greater odds of offspring young adult depression whereas instability in maternal depression was not directly associated with offspring mental health. Offspring biweekly emotion dynamics during adolescence significantly predicted subsequent anxiety and depression. Additionally, greater instability in maternal depression was associated with lower biweekly instability in sadness during adolescence, which was in turn associated with greater likelihood of young adult anxiety. Associations were independent of mean emotion levels and covariates. Conclusion Overall, findings highlight the importance of considering how the dynamics of mood and emotions across generations (e.g., mother, offspring) and timescales (e.g., daily, biweekly, yearly) may shape young adult psychopathology. To build from these initial findings, future studies could investigate these processes using genetically informative longitudinal designs, causal mediation analyses, and continuous measures of maternal depression.
Rinne et al. (Mon,) studied this question.