Martin Laura N, Renshaw Keith D, Mauro Kelsey L, Curby Timothy W, Ansell Emily, Chaplin Tara
George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.
Penn State University, 214 Biobehavioral Health Building, University Park, State College, PA 16802, USA.
J Child Fam Stud. 2023 Jul;32(7):2187-2197. doi: 10.1007/s10826-023-02608-x. Epub 2023 Jun 8.
The experience of childhood maltreatment is associated with greater psychological difficulties in survivors of maltreatment and their later children. While this intergenerational pattern is well-established, little is known about the mechanisms leading to negative outcomes in the children of maltreated parents. Moreover, many studies to date have focused on young children, with less research on adolescent children. In a sample of mother-adolescent child dyads ( = 241), we explored links between mothers' experiences of childhood maltreatment and adolescents' internalizing and externalizing symptoms over a 3-year period, as well as whether maternal emotion regulation difficulties and invalidating emotion socialization practices partially explained any links. Latent growth curve analysis revealed that internalizing symptoms increased slightly over the 3-year period, whereas externalizing symptoms remained stable on average. Mothers who reported higher levels of childhood maltreatment had adolescent children with greater overall levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but not greater increases over time. Maternal emotion regulation partially mediated the association between maternal history of childhood maltreatment and offspring externalizing symptoms but not internalizing symptoms. Maternal emotion socialization did not account for either association. Our results suggest that mothers' experiences of childhood maltreatment are associated with greater overall psychological difficulties in their adolescent children, and mothers' own emotion dysregulation partially accounts for that association for externalizing symptoms.
童年期受虐待的经历与受虐待幸存者及其后代更大的心理困扰有关。虽然这种代际模式已得到充分证实，但对于导致受虐待父母的子女出现负面结果的机制却知之甚少。此外，迄今为止的许多研究都集中在幼儿身上，对青少年子女的研究较少。在一个由母亲-青少年子女二元组组成的样本（n = 241）中，我们探讨了母亲童年期受虐待经历与青少年在3年期间内化和外化症状之间的联系，以及母亲的情绪调节困难和无效的情绪社会化行为是否部分解释了这些联系。潜在增长曲线分析显示，内化症状在3年期间略有增加，而外化症状平均保持稳定。报告童年期受虐待程度较高的母亲，其青少年子女的内化和外化症状总体水平更高，但随着时间的推移增加幅度不大。母亲的情绪调节部分介导了母亲童年期受虐待史与后代外化症状之间的关联，但与内化症状无关。母亲的情绪社会化并未解释这两种关联中的任何一种。我们的研究结果表明，母亲童年期受虐待的经历与她们青少年子女更大的总体心理困扰有关，并且母亲自身的情绪失调部分解释了外化症状的这种关联。
