Maartje P C M Luijk

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Children exposed to family violence (i.e. child abuse and neglect and intimate partner violence) are often emotionally insecure in their relationship with their parents, and develop psychosocial problems. Emotional insecurity increases the likelihood of psychosocial problems, and may affect adjustment in other contexts (e.g., school). Among childre...

Parents lie to their children, for example, to influence children's behavior and emotions ( parenting by lying ). The aim of this systematic review was to describe the current scientific literature on parental lying, including its prevalence, correlates, conceptualizations, and operationalizations. Through an extensive literature search using PRISM...

Het begrip gehechtheid wordt veel gebruikt door professionals die werken met kinderen en gezinnen in de dagelijkse praktijk (Van der Horst et al., 2024). Professionals hebben behoefte aan inzicht in gehechtheid, ook wel 'hechting' genoemd, als er zorgen zijn over jeugdigen of gezinnen (Hammarlund et al., 2022; Wright et al., 2023). Zowel wetenschap...

Of mensen gelukkig kunnen worden hangt voor een belangrijk deel af of ze in hun jeugd een duurzame relatie hebben weten op te bouwen met hun ouders en/of opvoeders. Naar het belang van de duurzaamheid van relaties bij het opgroeien en opvoeden is veel onderzoek gedaan. Een manier van kijken die heel vruchtbaar is gebleken, zowel voor ouders en jeug...

The aim of this preliminary study was to explore infant-mother attachment quality in a Dutch clinical sample of mothers with severe psychiatric disorder, with or without comorbid personality disorder. Thirty-two mothers were recruited through specialized secondary and tertiary outpatient clinics and mental health institutions. Maternal psychiatric...

Child safety is an important outcome of child protection services (CPSs); however, this is often assessed in terms of official registries (e.g., rereports). Little empirical evidence is available about how the frequency of child maltreatment changes during CPS intervention by using self‐report measures. The present study evaluates the frequency of...

In situations where parents do not accept support while their family situation is assessed as unsafe (for instance in cases of child abuse and neglect), it is sometimes necessary to offer mandatory support to families. The aim of the current study is to investigate how parents perceive the results of mandatory support from Child Protection Services...

Children with autistic symptoms experience challenges in school settings, yet little is known about their academic profiles and the mechanisms underlying the association between autistic symptoms and academic achievement. This study examined the association between autistic symptoms and academic achievement in a population-based sample of children...

Background. While there is ample theoretical and empirical interest in overparenting, little is known about how overparenting of adolescents operates in everyday family life. This study describes the development and validation of a novel instrument to assess overparenting with Experience Sampling Methods – The Momentary Overparenting (MOP) scale. M...

For centuries, a crying baby has been problem number one for parents. Present-day advice can roughly be divided between ignoring, to teach the baby that crying doesn’t pay, and responding promptly, to achieve secure attachment. This contradiction in advice can be traced back to a debate that was started in the 1960s between behaviorist Jack Gewirtz...

Children exposed to family violence are at risk for developing long-lasting problems. Family violence is a pervasive problem, however, studies comparing continuation with cessation of family violence are limited. Understanding the cessation or continuation of family violence on child development is a prerequisite to prevent enduring problems and de...

Up to 25% of children experience sleep problems. Transactional sleep models suggest bidirectional associations between parenting and children’s sleep problems. The current study aims to clarify the temporal associations between maternal sensitivity and children’s sleep problems across early childhood. This study includes 942 mother-child dyads from...

Maternal sensitivity and supportive discipline are important determinants of child self-regulation. Some evidence suggests that specific genetic or temperamental markers determine children’s susceptibility to the impact of maternal parenting on child self-regulation. Cortisol reactivity as a susceptibility marker moderating the relation between mat...

Background. While there is ample theoretical and empirical interest in overparenting, little is known about how overparenting of adolescents operates in everyday family life. This study describes the development and validation of a novel instrument to assess overparenting with Experience Sampling Methods – The Momentary Overparenting (MOP) scale. M...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the most common mood disorder in the United States today and the need for adequate treatment has been universally desired for over a century. Harry Harlow, famous for his research with rhesus monkeys, was heavily criticized when he undertook his controversial experiments trying to find a solution for depression in...

Objective: Understanding the relationship between attachment and mental health has an important role in informing management of perinatal mental disorders and for infant mental health. It has been suggested that experiences of attachment are transmitted from one generation to the next. Maternal sensitivity has been proposed as a mediator, although...

Background Children with autism have difficulties in understanding relationships, yet little is known about the levels of autistic traits with regard to peer relationships. This study examined the association between autistic traits and peer relationships. Additionally, we examined whether the expected negative association is more pronounced in chi...

Understanding if maternal depression is a predictor of infant-parent attachment classification is important to furthering knowledge about the early pathways and predictors of socio-emotional development. Yet few studies that have utilised the Strange Situation Procedure, the gold standard for measurement of infant-parent attachment, have examined a...

Maternal sensitivity and supportive discipline are important determinants of child self-regulation. Some evidence suggests that specific genetic or temperamental markers determine children’s susceptibility to the impact of maternal parenting on child self-regulation. Cortisol reactivity as a susceptibility marker moderating the relation between mat...

Childhood Anxiety Disorders (CAD) are a common childhood mental disorder and understanding early pathways is key to prevention and early intervention. What is not understood is whether early life stress predictors of CAD might be both mediated by infant cortisol reactivity and moderated by attachment. To address this question this study draws on 19...

Het belang van de ouderlijke partnerrelatie voor de ontwikkeling van het kind is al langer bekend. Het doel van deze meta-analyse was het samenvoegen van cross-sectioneel en longitudinaal empirisch onderzoek naar het verband tussen de ouderlijke partnerrelatie en het maladaptief functioneren van kinderen (d.w.z. externaliserende en internaliserende...

The current study investigates the association between physical child maltreatment and juvenile delinquent behavior in the context of the Situational Action Theory (SAT) (Wikström, 2006, 2017, 2020). Self-control, morality and exposure to criminogenic settings are proposed as possible mechanisms explaining the association between physical child mal...

Purpose To assess whether aggressive behavior and emotional problems from early childhood onwards are related to academic attainment at the end of primary education, and whether these associations are independent of attention problems. Methods Data on 2546 children participating in a longitudinal birth cohort in Rotterdam were analyzed. Aggressive...

We aimed to obtain reliable reference charts for sleep duration, estimate the prevalence of sleep complaints across the lifespan and identify risk indicators of poor sleep. Studies were identified through systematic literature search in Embase, Medline and Web of Science (9 August 2019) and through personal contacts. Eligible studies had to be publ...

Inleiding: Slaapproblemen komen vaak voor bij kinderen. Melatonine, zonder recept verkrijgbaar in Nederland, lijkt geregeld ingezet te worden om deze slaapproblemen te behandelen. Desondanks zijn er geen richtlijnen voor het gebruik van melatonine door gezonde kinderen en is er weinig kennis beschikbaar met betrekking tot neven- en langetermijneffe...

In this paper the authors respond to a study by Möller, De Vente and Rodenburg (2019) in which the calming effect of ‘mechanical soothing’ was compared to that of parental soothing. We question the conclusions drawn by Möller et al. about mechanical soothing as an appropriate alternative to parental soothing. We argue that mechanical soothing is un...

Background Psychotic experiences are common in childhood and an important risk indicator of adverse mental health outcomes. However, little is known about the association of psychotic experiences with functional outcomes in childhood, particularly regarding school performance. The aim of the present study was to examine whether psychotic experience...

The aim of the current meta-analysis was to aggregate concurrent and longitudinal empirical research on associations between the interparental relationship and both children's maladjustment (i.e., externalizing and internalizing symptoms) and children's responses to interparental conflict (i.e., emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological)....

De diversiteit van gezinsvorming en -samenstelling in de hedendaagse samenleving maakt dat het opvoeden van kinderen complexer is geworden. Opgroeiende kinderen worden beïnvloed door uiteenlopende factoren van binnen en buiten het gezin. Deze nieuwe druk is uitgebreid met twee nieuwe hoofdstukken. De bestaande hoofdstukken zijn geüpdatet met de mee...

One in ten parents in the Netherlands feels there is a problem with their baby's sleep. Healthy sleep is very important for children and parents. Because of the many questions asked by parents, professionals are in need of clear guidelines. The guideline 'Healthy sleep and sleep problems in children', provided by the Dutch centre for youth health (...

Importance Children with severe hearing loss are known to have more behavioral problems and may perform worse at school than children without. Few large-scale studies of slight to mild hearing loss are available. Objective To examine the relevance of slight to mild hearing loss by studying its association with behavioral problems and school perfor...

Background Children who experience Child Abuse and Neglect (CAN) are at an increased risk of becoming a victim of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) or a perpetrator of IPV or CAN. Moreover, maltreated children are at risk for developing long-lasting trauma symptoms, which can subsequently affect their own children’s lives. Understanding the mechanism...

Poor quality of the early infant-parent bond predicts later child problems. Infant-parent attachment has been suggested to influence brain development, but this association has hardly been examined. In adults, larger amygdala volumes have been described in relation to early attachment disorganization; neuroimaging studies of attachment in children,...

Sleep problems are reported in 25% of children and adolescents.¹ Melatonin is available in many countries without a prescription and is often considered a pharmacologic strategy to treat sleep problems. However, no clinical guidelines are available, and effectiveness and long-term effects of melatonin use in children are largely unknown.¹ Melatonin...

The inception of the discipline of pedagogical science in the Netherlands was exactly one hundred years ago in 2018. After a brief description of the history of pedagogy, several domains of the current field of pedagogy, in particular child and family studies and clinical child and family studies are highlighted. Next, the interrelations between pe...

Background Previous studies have shown that poor family environments are related to more sleep problems; however, little is known about how family irregularity in early life affects the development of sleep problems over childhood using objective sleep measures. The current study tests the hypothesis that early family irregularity contributes to th...

Background Both preterm and post-term births have been associated with neonatal morbidity and mortality, including adverse impact on neurodevelopment. Important neural maturational processes take place during sleep in newborns, but findings on gestational duration and sleep in early childhood are contradictory and often derive from small clinical s...

Approximately 30% of individuals who have experienced maltreatment as a child, maltreat their own children (Egeland, Jacobvitz, & Sroufe, 1988; Kaufman & Zigler, 1987). Although research has focused on intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment (e.g., Belsky, Jaffee, Sligo, Woodward, & Silva, 2005; Pears & Capaldi, 2001), less is known ab...

Background: Psychotic experiences compromise auditory and visual perceptive phenomena, such as hearing or seeing things that are not there, or delusional thoughts, in the absence of a psychotic disorder (Kelleher, Jenner, & Cannon, 2010). It is important to study childhood psychotic experiences because children, who report such symptoms in late chi...

Parental separation is a major adverse childhood experience. Parental separation is generally preceded by conflict, which is itself a risk factor for child problem behavior. Whether parental separation independent of conflict has negative effects on child problem behavior is unclear. This study was embedded in Generation R, a population-based cohor...

Background: Psychotic experiences comprise auditory and visual perceptive phenomena, such as hearing or seeing things that are not there, in the absence of a psychotic disorder. Psychotic experiences commonly occur in the general pediatric population. Although the majority of psychotic experiences are transient, they are predictive of future psych...

De Amerikaanse dierpsycholoog Harry Harlow is vooral bekend om zijn onderzoek naar de band tussen moeder en kind bij resusapen (gepubliceerd in 1958 als The Nature of Love). Zijn werk naar depressie is echter nauwelijks bekend. Nadat Harlow zelf met een depressie te kampen had gehad begon hij onderzoek naar depressie bij apen. Hij wekte een depress...

Background Sleep difficulties are prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The temporal nature of the association between sleep problems and ASD is unclear because longitudinal studies are lacking. Our aim is to clarify whether sleep problems precede and worsen autistic traits and ASD or occur as a consequence of the disorder. Me...

BACKGROUND: Brain development underlies maturation of sleep patterns throughout childhood. Intrauterine head growth -marker of early neurodevelopment- has not been associated with childhood sleep characteristics. We explored associations between ultrasonographic measures of prenatal and early postnatal neurodevelopment and childhood sleep. METHODS...

The parent–child attachment relationship plays an important role in the development of the infant's stress regulation system. However, genetic and epigenetic factors such as FK506 binding protein 51 ( FKBP5 ) genotype and DNA methylation have also been associated with hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis functioning. In the current study, we examine...

Objectives Little is known about the impact of sleep disturbances on the structural properties of the developing brain. This study explored associations between childhood sleep disturbances and brain morphology at 7 years. Methods Mothers from the Generation R cohort reported sleep disturbances in 720 children at ages 2 months, 1.5, 2, 3, and 6 ye...

Objective: Cortisol, the end-product of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, plays an important role in modulating sleep. Yet, studies investigating the association between diurnal cortisol rhythm and sleep patterns in young children are scarce. We tested the hypothesis that the diurnal cortisol rhythm is associated with shorter sleep du...

De diversiteit van gezinsvorming en -samenstelling in de hedendaagse samenleving maakt dat het opvoeden van kinderen een complexere aangelegenheid is geworden. Opgroeiende kinderen worden beïnvloed door factoren van binnen en van buiten het gezin. Invloeden binnen het gezin zijn de (nieuwe) rol van vaders of het al dan niet opgroeien met adoptief-,...

The practice of parent and child sharing a sleeping surface, or ‘bed-sharing’, is one of the most controversial topics in parenting research. The lay literature has popularized and polarized this debate, offering on one hand claims of dangers, and on the other, of benefits - both physical and psychological - associated with bed-sharing. To address...

We tested whether mother-infant bed-sharing is associated with increased secure infant-mother attachment, a previously unexplored association. Frequency of bed-sharing and mothers' nighttime comforting measures at 2 months were assessed with questionnaires in 550 Caucasian mothers from a population-based cohort. Attachment security was assessed wit...

SYNOPSIS: Objective. Relations between maternal and paternal expressed emotion during pregnancy and observed sensitive parenting behavior of mothers (N = 553) and fathers (N = 518) in early childhood were examined. Design. Expressed emotion, represented by emotional overinvolvement and criticism, was measured around the 34th week of gestation using...

Although the environmental influences on infant attachment disorganization and security are well-studied, little is known about their heritability. Candidate gene studies have shown small, often non-replicable effects. In this study, we gathered the largest sample (N = 657) of ethnically homogenous, 14-month-old children with both observed attachme...

The effects of child care services on several domains of child development have been extensively investigated, but evidence regarding the effects of child care on language development remains inconclusive. Within a large-scale population-based study, we examined the longitudinal associations between non-parental child care and language development...

Household crowding can place young children at risk for respiratory infections which subsequently provoke asthma symptoms. However, crowding might also protect against asthma, in accordance with the hygiene hypothesis. We tested if parent-infant bed-sharing, an important dimension of household crowding, increases or decreases the risk for asthma. I...

To date few studies have examined how multiple layers of influences shape the emergence of bed-sharing practices in the first 2years postpartum. In our report, we examined bed-sharing in a large multiethnic sample, exploring the influences of three broad classes of influence on bed-sharing at single time points and across time: (1) sociodemographic...

We examined associations of disorganized attachment and maternal depressive symptoms with infant autonomic functioning in 450 infant-mother dyads enrolled in the Generation R study. Maternal depressive symptoms were measured 2 months postpartum with the Brief Symptom Inventory. At 14 months, we assessed infant attachment with a slightly shortened S...

Objective. To examine the role of infant attachment classification and parenting stress for toddler emotional and behavior problems. Design. Participants were 606 infant–mother dyads who took part in a population-based cohort study in the Netherlands. Infant–mother attachment classification was assessed using the Strange Situation Procedure when th...

To examine the association of breastfeeding with maternal sensitive responsiveness and infant-mother attachment security and disorganization. We included 675 participants of a prospective cohort study. Questionnaires about breastfeeding practices were administered at 2 and 6 months postpartum. At 14 months, maternal sensitive responsiveness was ass...

Aim We studied the effects of early mother–child relationship quality and child temperament on the development of child compliance and active resistance in a large population-based cohort study (n= 534). Background Parenting and the quality of the parent–child relationship can either hamper or support the development of child compliance directly or...

We examined the effects of maternal history of depressive disorder and the effects of depressive symptoms during pregnancy and the early postpartum period on attachment insecurity and disorganization. A total of 627 mother-infant dyads from the Generation R Study participated in a population-based cohort from fetal life onwards. Maternal history of...

Attachment disorganization in infancy is a risk factor for behavior problems and other psychopathology. Traditionally the role of parental behavior for qualitative differences in early attachment relationships has been emphasized. However, disrupted infant-parent interactions only partly explain attachment disorganization. A complementary focus on...

In two birth cohort studies with genetic, sensitive parenting, and attachment data of more than 1,000 infants in total, we tested main and interaction effects of candidate genes involved in the dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin systems (DRD4, DRD2, COMT, 5-HTT, OXTR) on attachment security and disorganization. Parenting was assessed using observati...

Maternal sensitive responsiveness and extreme insensitivity only partly explain the variance in attachment security. Differences in attachment security may well be rooted in the interplay of genetic variations and environmental factors. The association between parenting (observed sensitive responsiveness and extreme insensitivity) and attachment se...

Family history is a major risk factor for child problem behaviour, yet few studies have examined the association between grandparental psychiatric disorder and child problem behaviour. Results are inconsistent as to whether the effect of grandparental depression on child problem behaviour is independent of parental psychopathology. Mothers and thei...

Quality of the parent-infant attachment relationship influences physiological stress regulation. Genetic factors also contribute to the stress regulatory HPA-axis. Quality of attachment as an index of the rearing environment (measured with the Strange Situation Procedure, SSP), and HPA-axis related SNPs (BclI, rs41423247; TthIIII, rs10052957; GR-9β...

Both attachment insecurity and maternal depression are thought to affect infants' emotional and physiological regulation. In the current study, Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) attachment classifications, and cortisol stress reactivity and diurnal rhythm were assessed at 14 months in a prospective cohort study of 369 mother-infant dyads. Maternal...

In this meta-analysis of 75 studies on more than 3,888 children in 19 different countries, the intellectual development of children living in children’s homes (orphanages) was compared with that of children living with their (foster) families. Children growing up in children’s homes showed lower IQ’s than did children growing up in a family (trimme...