Deakin University on Inherited

According to incredible research from Deakin Uni, it turns out our early relationships, including our teenage besties and parents, can completely influence our adult ones. Associate Professor Jackie McDonald helped lead this research and she joins me right now. Jackie, one of the things that really surprised me was the link between early relationship quality and mental health during the transition to parenthood. Why do those teenage relationships still matter decades later? Becoming a parent is one of the biggest transitions we go through. It's joyful, but it's also demanding and it can be quite destabilising. But what we find is that the emotional resources people draw on at that moment were being built long before. And two things seem to matter. The first is mental health among new mums and dads who experienced real psychological distress in the first year. More than eight in ten had already shown signs of similar struggles back in their teens or twenties. So for most, it doesn't come out of nowhere with the baby. The signs are usually there much earlier. And the second is the relationship themselves. Learning early on that you can trust people, building the networks who will be there for you, and leaning on them gives you something to draw on when you're suddenly responsible for a newborn. So our research provides good evidence that supporting young people's mental health and their relationships isn't only good for them at the time, it's also an investment in how they'll cope and bond as parents years later. So for more, you can visit deakin.edu.au forward slash inherited.