Maternal depressed mood during pregnancy may shape a child's adaptation to their environment and engagement in goal-directed behaviour such as executive functions. Whether everyday household context also alters executive functions in children with prenatal selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant exposure remains to be determined.

To examine the impact of prenatal depressed maternal mood and SSRI exposure on child executive functions and to determine whether these exposures shape a susceptibility to household chaos.

A prospective cohort study of mothers and their children (118 mother–children dyads (47 SSRI-exposed, 71 non-exposed)) followed from the second trimester to 6 years. Regression models examined relationships between maternal depressed mood and household chaos on maternal report of child executive functions. Competitive-confirmatory regression models examined whether children were susceptible to household chaos or were positively influenced by less chaos.

Prenatal SSRI exposure, third-trimester maternal depressed mood and household chaos in a three-way interaction were associated with executive functions within a model of differential susceptibility. When household chaos was low, children of non-prenatally depressed mothers had better executive function than children of prenatally depressed mothers, regardless of whether the mothers were SSRI-treated. However, when household chaos was high, SSRI-exposed children of mothers who were not depressed during pregnancy had poorer executive functions at 6 years of age compared with SSRI-exposed children whose mothers were symptomatic during pregnancy.

The impact of household chaos depended on whether mothers were prenatally depressed and whether mothers were SSRI-treated.