1-195 - Child Health and Developmental Outcomes in the Context of Parental Trauma

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The experience of trauma in the early years places children on a compromised developmental path (Yoches et al., 2011). Maternal past and/or current trauma may adversely affect maternal parenting (Dube et al., 2002), which places children at developmental risk (Jaffee & Christian, 2014). This symposium will address the relation of parental trauma to child outcomes, in three studies of young children from low-income families.
The first paper examines the complex relation between maternal experience of intimate partner violence and childhood maltreatment, parental stress, parenting, and child reactivity and behavior problems. In the second paper, researchers document that exposure to past trauma was related to adverse birth outcomes among low-income, African American women. In the third paper, the authors found that the more psychological trauma to which children were exposed, the lower their reported emotion regulation and attachment. For toddlers, psychological trauma predicted expressive communication.

The results of these three studies converge to confirm past research on the negative impacts of trauma exposure on parenting and child outcomes (Jaffee et al., 2012). Each study fills a unique gap in the research by documenting: 1) the interactive effect of IPV and past maltreatment on parenting and child outcomes; 2) the impact of maternal trauma on birth outcomes; and 3) the contribution of familial psychological risk/trauma to young children’s school behavior and language. Taken together, these findings underscore the need to examine parental trauma as a critical factor for understanding children’s developmental outcomes.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Brenda Jones Harden, University of Maryland

Discussant

• Cheryl Ann Boyce, National Institutes of Health

Individual Presentations

• Trauma, early parenting, and toddler emotion regulation and behavior problems - Presenting Author: Brenda Jones Harden, University of Maryland; Tiffany Martoccio, University of Maryland; Lisa Berlin, University of Maryland

• Exposure to Trauma and Adverse Birth Outcomes in Low-income African American Women - Presenting Author: Colleen I Morrison, University of Maryland; Shelby Brown, University of Maryland

• The short-term impacts of psychological stress and trauma on young children’s socioemotional and language development - Presenting Author: Erin N. Cannon, University of Maryland, College Park; Shannon S. Guss, University of Oklahoma - Tulsa