How does a depressed mom impact her child's emotional development?

Severely.: The child's emotional development depends on a give-and-take with the primary caregiver: infants learn to replicate the caregiver's nonverbal mood cues, and caregiver's displays of pleasure reinforce behaviors of the infant that led to these positive reactions. A depressed parent is unable to provide these reinforcements.

Delays it: Infants of depressed mothers show differences in their efforts to get their moms to smile and "coo" back at them as young as two months of age. If a typically engaged, interactive mom keeps her face expressionless ( " still face"), her baby keeps trying to get her attention, while a depressed mom's infant gives up very quickly and turns his face away.