Poster #144 - Maternal Experiences of Childhood Emotional Abuse: Relations with Toddler Emotion Dysregulation

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Emotional abuse, also known as psychological or emotional maltreatment, is likely the most common form of child maltreatment (Hibbard, Barlow, & MacMillan, 2012); a recent meta-analysis estimates that 27% of children worldwide experience emotional abuse (Stoltenborgh, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Alink, & van IJzendoorn, 2012). Childhood emotional abuse frequently co-occurs with physical and sexual abuse, and may increase the severity of negative consequences from other forms of maltreatment. However, emotional abuse may also be the only form of abuse a child experiences, and this maltreatment alone has been linked to a variety of negative consequences, including emotion dysregulation, feelings of hopelessness in the victim, mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, and structural changes in the brain, such as a reduced prefrontal cortex in the victim (Burns, Jackson, & Harding, 2010; Courtney, Kushwaha, & Johnson, 2008; Van Harmelen et al., 2010). However, to the author’s knowledge, no studies have looked at the intergenerational transmission of the effects of emotional abuse, even though the intergenerational effects of physical and sexual abuse have been established. The current study investigated the relation of mothers’ childhood experiences of caregiver emotional abuse with their toddlers’ emotion dysregulation.

Maternal experiences of childhood emotional abuse were assessed by coding Adult Attachment Interviews of primiparous women enrolled in a larger, longitudinal study using a newly developed scale created by the authors. Participants (n = 118) were recruited in and around a large southwestern city, were in their third trimester, cohabitating with their partner, and fluent in English. Mothers and their toddlers were assessed for maternal caregiving quality through videotapes of the mother feeding, changing, and playing with her child. Measures of maternal caregiving quality, such as maternal sensitivity, disengagement, and frightening behaviors, were assessed using The Infant/Toddler Caregiving Scales (Hazen, McFarland, Jacobvitz, & Boyd-Soisson, 2010). Toddler emotion regulation was assessed through two tasks that have been previously successfully used to assess toddler emotion regulation by inducing frustration (Hazen et al., 2010).

A linear hierarchical regression was conducted to examine the links between abuse, caregiving, and toddler emotional underregulation while controlling for maternal age and familial income. As expected, mothers who experienced childhood emotional abuse were more likely to have toddlers with higher levels of emotion dysregulation (see table; F(7, 90) = 2.16, p < .05). Maternal caregiving quality did not mediate the relation between maternal experiences of emotional abuse and toddler dysregulation. Additionally, maternal experiences of childhood physical and sexual abuse were not shown to be related to emotional dysregulation in toddlers, underscoring the specific, important consequences that early emotional abuse can have intergenerationally. This research is among the first to look at the specific intergenerational effects of emotional abuse.

Authors

• Ashleigh I. Aviles, The University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Nancy Hazen, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Jacobvitz, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author