1-080 - Representations & Intergenerational Transmission: Moderating and Mediating Roles of Violence & Maltreatment in Early Childhood

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Theory and growing evidence suggest that experiences of violence and maltreatment interact with attachment in a transactional way, with attachment organization impacting how experiences of violence or maltreatment are integrated, and experiences of violence or maltreatment impacting caregivers’ and children’s representations. The papers in this symposium will explore these transactional relationships during the early childhood period in caregiver-child models, asking how, in contexts of violence and maltreatment, caregivers’ representations impact parenting (paper 1); caregivers’ representations impact children’s behavior (paper 2); and children’s representations are impacted (paper 3).

The first paper takes a developmental approach. In this paper, caregiver experiences of intimate partner violence moderate the relation between caregiver representations at one-year postpartum and parenting practices three years later, such that secure mothers’ parenting appears vulnerable to the effects of psychological abuse.

The second paper examines how caregiver representations may impact children’s experiences of violence. In this paper, caregivers’ positive representations appear to buffer against negative behavioral outcomes among preschoolers exposed to violence.

The final paper turns to children’s representations. In this paper, children’s experiences of maltreatment mediate the relation between caregivers’ borderline features and children’s representations, offering a promising first step towards an intergenerational model of one pathway to BPD transmission.

Together, these papers illuminate how experiences of violence intersect with how caregivers and children see one another, as well as how they behave. They also provide support for trauma-informed evidence-based interventions in early childhood that emphasize shifting representations and attachment-related behaviors (Lieberman & Van Horn, 2013; Dozier, 2003).

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Sarah A.O. Gray, Tulane University

Discussant

• Sheree L Toth, University of Rochester

Individual Presentations

• How do post-partum maternal representations and intimate partner violence influence maternal parenting in early childhood? - Presenting Author: Alytia Levendosky, Michigan State University; G. Anne A Bogat, Michigan State University; Nicola Bernard, Michigan State University; Alexander von Eye, Michigan State University

• How does caregiver insightfulness relate to child outcomes among violence-exposed and non-exposed young children? - Presenting Author: Sarah A.O. Gray, Tulane University; Danielle Forbes; Margaret Briggs-Gowan, University of Connecticut Health Center; Alice S Carter, University of Massachusetts, Boston

• Does child maltreatment mediate between maternal borderline features and young children’s narrative representations? - Presenting Author: Jenny A Macfie, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Jennifer Marie Strimpfel, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Gretchen Kurdziel, Univ of Tennessee; Rebecca M Skadberg, The University of Tennessee