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Beyond Deficits: Intimate Partner Violence, Maternal Parenting, and Child Behavior Over Time

  • Original Article
  • Published:
American Journal of Community Psychology

An Erratum to this article was published on 22 May 2014

Abstract

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) has negative consequences for children’s well-being and behavior. Much of the research on parenting in the context of IPV has focused on whether and how IPV victimization may negatively shape maternal parenting, and how parenting may in turn negatively influence child behavior, resulting in a deficit model of mothering in the context of IPV. However, extant research has yet to untangle the interrelationships among the constructs and test whether the negative effects of IPV on child behavior are indeed attributable to IPV affecting mothers’ parenting. The current study employed path analysis to examine the relationships among IPV, mothers’ parenting practices, and their children’s externalizing behaviors over three waves of data collection among a sample of 160 women with physically abusive partners. Findings indicate that women who reported higher levels of IPV also reported higher levels of behavior problems in their children at the next time point. When parenting practices were examined individually as mediators of the relationship between IPV and child behavior over time, one type of parenting was significant relationship, such that IPV lead to higher authoritative parenting and lower child behavior problems. On the other hand, there was no evidence that higher levels of IPV contributed to more child behavior problems due to maternal parenting. Instead, IPV had a significant cumulative indirect effect on child behavior via the stability of both IPV and behavior over time. Implications for promoting women’s and children’s well-being in the context of IPV are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Capitalization on chance is a potential issue within complex SEM models. However a Bonferroni (or similar) correction was not used in the current study. The paths that were tested were theoretically driven; many paths that could have been tested were not tested. 47 directional paths were tested (not including the paths involving the control variable). In such a model, only 2.4 significant paths would be expected by chance alone (and 27 were actually significant). A Bonferroni correction would increase the likelihood of Type II error in the current sample size, and therefore the current approach is preferable.

  2. Evidence of an indirect effect supports the idea of a mediational relationship. However, other characteristics must also be present (e.g., temporal precedence), to fully meet the criteria of mediation.

  3. The mediational criterion of temporal order was met, as the independent variable was measured at T1 (IPV), potential mediators at T2, and the dependent variable at T3 (children’s behavior).

  4. At first glance, this may appear somewhat surprising as authoritarian and authoritative parenting are negatively correlated with one another. This correlational finding represents between women differences in parenting with women who engage in more authoritative parenting also engaging in fewer authoritarian practices than women who engage in fewer authoritative parenting practices. The relationship between IPV at T1 to authoritarian and authoritative at T2 is a within-women change in parenting such that women who experienced higher IPV, engaged in higher authoritarian and authoritative parenting practices at T2 compared to their own individual parenting levels at T1om T1 to T2. Due to the fundamental differences in how these findings are assessed (between women vs. within women differences in parenting), they are not contradictory. Rather it is possible for women who experience high levels of IPV at T1 to increase their own authoritarian and authoritative parenting practices relative from T1 to T2, while across the entire sample, on average, women who engage in higher authoritative parenting still tend to engage in lower authoritarian parenting than women who tend to engage in lower levels of authoritative parenting.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant R01 MH57267. The authors are grateful for the dedication of all research team members, as well as input from all participants, without whom this research would not have been possible.

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Correspondence to Megan R. Greeson.

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Greeson, M.R., Kennedy, A.C., Bybee, D.I. et al. Beyond Deficits: Intimate Partner Violence, Maternal Parenting, and Child Behavior Over Time. Am J Community Psychol 54, 46–58 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-014-9658-y

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