Chung Yoonzie, Ahn Haksoon
School of Social Work, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Child Maltreat. 2025 Aug;30(3):394-405. doi: 10.1177/10775595241307896. Epub 2024 Dec 9.
The purpose of this study is to explore the association between material hardship and child maltreatment, mediated by social cohesion. We used three waves (age three, age five, and age nine) from Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW), a longitudinal cohort study of approximately 5000 families in 20 U.S. cities. The sample size was 2402. The independent variable was material hardship, and the dependent variable was child maltreatment (physical/psychological abuse and neglect). Using a multiple regression analysis, the current study found a positive association between material hardship and frequency of physical/psychological abuse. Social cohesion was found to mediate the relationship between material hardship and physical/psychological abuse among financially secure mothers in the Sobel test, which assesses the presence of indirect effects of the independent variable on the dependent variable. These findings suggest that material hardship mitigation and social cohesion enhancement are potential strategies to prevent physical/psychological abuse.
本研究的目的是探讨以社会凝聚力为中介的物质匮乏与儿童虐待之间的关联。我们使用了来自“家庭与儿童福祉未来研究”（FFCW）的三个时间点的数据（三岁、五岁和九岁），这是一项对美国20个城市中约5000个家庭进行的纵向队列研究。样本量为2402。自变量是物质匮乏，因变量是儿童虐待（身体/心理虐待和忽视）。通过多元回归分析，本研究发现物质匮乏与身体/心理虐待频率之间存在正相关。在评估自变量对因变量间接影响是否存在的索贝尔检验中，发现社会凝聚力在经济状况稳定的母亲中中介了物质匮乏与身体/心理虐待之间的关系。这些发现表明，减轻物质匮乏和增强社会凝聚力是预防身体/心理虐待的潜在策略。
