Early Parenting Strengths in Caregivers with a History of Victimization

• In Event: 2-146 - Maternal Behaviors and Parenting After Children’s Trauma Exposure: Identifying Factors Promoting Children’s Adaptive Development

Integrative Statement

Background: Research on parenting in victimized women has focused overwhelmingly on a deficit-focused approach, with previous victimization being associated with parental hostility and lower levels of parental warmth. Importantly, the negative affect of previous victimization on women’s parenting behaviors appears to be primary explained by the contribution of women’s victimization to mental health difficulties. Despite the consistency of these findings in the research literature, qualitative work with women highlights a number of important parenting strengths that have, to date, been unexamined in the quantitative literature. The current study evaluated the role of women’s victimization history and current depression on an underexamined aspect of parenting – parental empathy.
Method: Caregivers (n=756) were drawn from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect, a nationally diverse sample of families whose children were identified as at-risk for experiencing maltreatment. Multiple regression analyses examined the contributions of mothers’ history of victimization and current depression symptoms on parental empathy when their children were 4 years of age, controlling for both income and children’s maltreatment history.
Results: The overall model explained a significant portion of the variance in parental empathy (F=19.96, p<.001, R2=0.14). Caregiver depression was associated with significantly lower levels of empathy (β=-.15, p<.001). Caregiver victimization, however, was associated with significantly higher levels of empathy toward children (β=.31, p<.05). Given that victimization and caregiver depression were significantly positively associated (r=.28, p<.001), moderating effects were examine to probe the complex relationship between these three constructs. There was some evidence of a potential moderating effect (β=.01, p=.09), with a weaker relationship between depression and empathy for those caregivers experiencing higher levels of victimization. Post-hoc analyses suggested that this moderating relationship appears to be driven by individuals with a history of recent physical victimization in adulthood, with the protective moderating affect not present for those individuals with a history of other types of victimization.
Conclusions: These results replicate previous research demonstrating a negative relationship between caregiver psychopathology and empathy (Psychogiou, Daley, Thompson, & Sonuga-Barke, 2010), but demonstrate an unexpected protective effect of caregiver victimization. That is, caregiver victimization was association with overall higher levels of empathy toward children, and appeared to be somewhat protective even in cases where caregivers also were experiencing depression symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of a well-rounded understanding of parenting in contexts of violence and trauma that appropriately encompasses both risks and resilience.

Authors

• Laura Miller-Graff, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Kathryn Scrafford, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author