Parental warmth and affection in early childhood could have lifelong physical and mental health benefits for children, with recent research pointing to an important underlying process: their sense of social safety.
The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry and led by the University of California-Los Angeles in collaboration with University College London, found that children who experience more maternal warmth at the age of three have more positive perceptions of social safety at 14, which in turn predicts better physical and mental health outcomes at 17.
Greater maternal warmth, defined as more praise, positive tone of voice and acts of affection, has previously been shown to predict better health across the lifespan.
However, the mechanisms underlying these associations have been unclear, said Dr Jenna Alley, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at UCLA.
One possibility is that interpersonal experiences early in life affect whether children perceive the social world as safe vs threatening, accepting vs rejecting and supportive vs dismissive. Over time, these perceptions develop into mental frameworks, called social safety schemas, which help individuals interpret, organise, and make predictions about social situations and relationships.
“Your social safety schema is the lens through which you view every social interaction you have,” Alley said. “In a way, these schemas represent your core beliefs about the world, what you can expect from it, and how you fit in.”
The UCLA Health study is the first longitudinal research to track how maternal warmth in early childhood is related to perceptions of social safety in mid- adolescence, and how perceptions of social safety influence physical and mental health outcomes as youth near adulthood.
Warmth from fathers was not studied because there were insufficient data from fathers in the dataset used in the study from the Millennium Cohort Study.
Parental warmth care has historically been overlooked in research, Alley said, although preliminary research suggests that the quality of care that fathers provide also predicts child outcomes and should thus be a focus of future research.
Researchers used data from more than 8 500 children who were assessed as part of the long-term Millennium Cohort Study in the United Kingdom.
Independent evaluators visited the children’s homes at age three and assessed their mother’s warmth (praise, positive tone of voice) and harshness (physically restraining or grabbing the child).
At age 14, social safety schemas were measured with questions such as “Do I have family and friends who help me feel safe, secure and happy?” The children then reported on their overall physical health, psychiatric problems and psychological distress at 17.
Alley and her colleagues found:
• Children with mothers exhibiting more maternal warmth in early childhood perceived the world as being more socially safe at 14 and had fewer physical health problems at age 17.
• Children who perceived the world as more socially safe at 14 in turn had fewer physical health problems, less psychological distress and fewer psychiatric problems at 17.
• Children’s social safety schemas fully explained the association between maternal warmth and how psychologically distressed youth were at age 17.
• In contrast, maternal harshness did not predict children’s perceptions of social safety at 14, or their physical or mental health at 17.
“These are the first results we know of showing that maternal warmth can affect the health and well-being of kids years later by influencing how they think about the social world,” said Dr George Slavich, senior author of the study and Director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at UCLA.
“That is a powerful message, because although early-life circumstances are not always easy to change, we can help youth view others and their future in a more positive light.”
Alley said the fact that maternal warmth was found to more strongly affect adolescent health than maternal harshness was important because it has implications for how to best intervene.
Based on the study findings, for example, enhancing a teenager’s sense of safety, by way of a public health campaign or intervention, may be more effective than focusing on reducing perceptions of harshness, and it can potentially have a positive impact on health outcomes for years to come, even after poor maternal care has been experienced.
“The findings tell the story of resilience. Namely, it’s not just about stopping the negative things like poor care, but about putting effort toward enhancing the positives like warmth and safety,” Alley said.
“It is also important to know that people who have experienced poor care during childhood are not doomed; if we focus on their perceptions of the world, we can greatly improve their lives.”
Additional studies are needed to determine how maternal warmth affects children in other contexts outside the United Kingdom, as well as how healthcare providers and policymakers may improve perceptions of social safety to enhance youth health outcomes.
Study details
Childhood Maternal Warmth, Social Safety Schemas, and Adolescent Mental and Physical Health
Jenna Alley, Dimitris Tsomokos, Summer Mengelkoch et al.
Published in JAMA Psychiatry on 28 May 2025
Abstract
Importance
Although early maternal warmth strongly predicts adolescent health, questions remain about the biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying this association.
Objective
To understand how maternal warmth at three years of age shapes adolescent social safety schemas at 14 years of age and physical and mental health at 17 years of age.
Design, Setting, and Participants
The Millennium Cohort Study tracks approximately 19 200 children born from late 2000 to early 2002 in the UK. Participants were assessed from ages three to 17 years.
Exposure
Low maternal warmth (eg, lack of praise, negative tone of voice when speaking to the child) and maternal harshness (eg, using physical restraint, grabbing the child) were independently coded during a home visit (age 3 years).
Main Outcomes and Measures
Social safety (age 14 years) was measured by children’s responses to three items (eg, “I have family and friends who help me feel safe, secure and happy”). Physical health was self-reported on a scale ranging from 1 (excellent) to 5 (poor) (age 17 years). Psychological distress (age 17 years) was assessed using the 6-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale. Psychiatric problems (age 17) was a latent variable composed of self-disclosed clinical diagnosis of depression/anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal behaviors.
Results
The present sample included 8 540 youths (52% female; 3.0% black or black British, 2.8% Indian, 6.7% Pakistani and Bangladeshi, 2.8% mixed, 83% white, and 1.6% other). Data were analysed from March 2024 to September 2024 using structural equation modelling. In models controlling for sex, ethnicity, income, neighbourhood disadvantage, maternal mental health, and early cognitive ability, the paths from childhood maternal warmth (but not harshness) to social safety schemas at 14 years of age (b = 0.03; P < .001) and physical health at 17 years of age (b = 0.05; P = .02) were significant, suggesting that early maternal warmth enhances subsequent perceived social safety and physical health. Additionally, the paths from negative social safety schemas at 14 years of age to poorer physical health (b = 0.50; P < .001), psychological distress (b = 5.37; P < .001), and psychiatric problems (b = 0.21; P < .001) at 17 years of age were significant, suggesting that greater perceived social safety prospectively predicts better health. Social safety at 14 years of age mediated 20% to 100% of the effect of early maternal warmth on physical health, psychological distress, and psychiatric problems at 17 years of age (b = 0.01-0.15; P < .001 for all).
Conclusions and Relevance
These results show that early-life maternal warmth affected adolescent health by influencing perceptions of social safety. Improving parent-child relationships and enhancing youths’ perceptions of social safety may thus improve adolescent health.
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