Intergenerational family violence and adversity among low-income mothers and their children

• In Event: Developmental Research on Maltreatment and Violence

Abstract

Introduction: Cycles of adversity and violence can perpetuate across a lifetime and span generations. Both adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) generally, and childhood exposure to family violence specifically, are associated with increased risk of future intimate partner violence (IPV, Hughes et al., 2017; McKinney et al., 2009). Maternal ACEs and IPV are also associated with negative next-generation child outcomes. Results from several studies demonstrate that IPV and other forms of maternal adversity experienced in adulthood can serve as mediational pathways that link maternal ACEs to child social and emotional problems (Gartland et al., 2019; Fredland et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2022), but a review of recent studies revealed no similar mediation analysis where the outcome was next-generation violence exposure. Notably, Buffarini et al., (2022) found that maternal ACE exposure increased the risk of both IPV and caregiver-reported child maltreatment but did not test the extent to which IPV may mediate ACEs effect on child maltreatment. The current study uses a sample of 3,065 low-income maternal caregivers and their children to assess the degree to which IPV mediates the association between maternal ACEs and next generation child CPS-involvement.

Study Population and Methods: The sample includes maternal caregivers and their children enrolled in a statewide network of evidence-based home visiting program in the Midwest U.S. between 2014 and 2019. Caregiver covariates (age at childbirth, race/ethnicity, education, marital status), ACEs, and IPV history were collected by home visitors. We applied two conventional ACE subscales for this analysis: child maltreatment and household dysfunction (both 0-5). Children were matched with state child protective services (CPS) records. CPS-involvement was defined as at least one screened-in CPS report, which is a common proxy measure for maltreatment. We assessed the extent to which IPV mediated the effect of ACEs on CPS-involvement while controlling for covariates. Models used weighted least-squared mean and variance adjusted estimators and bootstrapping (2,000 samples).

Result: Maternal ACE subscales had a positive association with IPV (maltreatment B = .29, p < .001; household dysfunction B = .13, p < .001). The total effect of ACEs on next-gneration CPS-involvement was also positive (maltreatment B = .098, p < .001; household dysfunction B = .058, p = .038). An examination of indirect effects, however, suggests that IPV mediated most of the association between ACEs association and CPS-involvement, with indirect effects making up 48.6% of the total effect of maltreatment ACEs and CPS-involvement and 35.9% of the total effect of household dysfunction ACEs on next-generation CPS-involvement.


Conclusion: This study supports previous evidence that intergenerational transmission between parental and child experiences of violence and adversity are often mediated by more proximal sources of adversity. Further, although interest in interrupting cycles of family violence may predate the ACEs framework, it is helpful to integrate the two bodies of literature given that other family adversity is likely to correlate with next-generation exposure violence and that ACEs have contributed to broad spectrum trauma-responsive approached that could beneficial to disrupting the intergenerational transmission of family violence.

Authors

• Colleen Janczewski, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
  Presenting Author

• Joshua Mersky, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

• ChienTi Plummer Lee, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee