Previous research discovered a positive association between maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems, but underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. The present study (N=107; 54% female) investigated whether maternal negative emotion expressiveness mediated the associations between maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing/externalizing behaviors at age 5. We found that maternal depressive symptoms were positively associated with maternal negative emotion expressiveness, which in turn was positively related to child internalizing behaviors and marginally, child externalizing behaviors.