The authors wish to thank the women and community partners who made this research possible as well as the graduate and undergraduate research assistants who helped with data collection and management. We have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.
Objective: Intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy is associated with perinatal health problems and postpartum psychopathology. Prenatal IPV is also detrimental to a mother’s perceptions of her unborn child, which may impact early parenting skills and contribute to negative effects on infant development. This study explored factors associated with parenting confidence among IPV-exposed pregnant women. Method: Participants included 137 women who experienced IPV during pregnancy (Mage = 27.3 years; 66.9% African American/Black). Hierarchical linear regression modeling was used to examine factors that may be related to parenting confidence, with number of children and number of pregnancy complications entered in Model 1, adverse childhood experiences and IPV severity added in Model 2, and depressive symptoms and resilience added in Model 3. Results: All models were significant, with the final model accounting for 23.2% of the variance in parenting confidence, F(6, 130) = 6.53, p < .001, R2 = .23. In this model, having other children (β = .18, p = .023), fewer pregnancy complications (β = −.19, p = .019), and higher resilience (β = .33, p < .001) were associated with higher parenting confidence. Conclusions: Results suggest that intervention strategies that promote resilience and address pregnant women’s health concerns may facilitate greater parenting confidence among IPV-exposed pregnant women.
Posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and resilience are two well-established outcomes following trauma exposure, but little work has examined the unique associations between these outcomes and factors across the social ecology. This theoretically grounded study assessed how individual, relational, and contextual social ecological factors relate to PTSS and resilience. Participants included 606 college students (18–25 years, Mage = 20.79, SD = 1.86; 82.51% Female; 56.60% White, 29.37% Black or African American, 5.78% Asian, 8.25% Other races) with exposure to at least one traumatic event. Two hierarchical linear regression models examined associations between individual (i.e., emotion dysregulation, anger severity), relational (i.e., family support, friend support), and contextual (i.e., community cohesion, community disorder) factors, and PTSS and resilience. At the individual level, higher emotion dysregulation was associated with higher PTSS and lower resilience; anger severity was not related to either outcome. At the relational level, more friend support was negatively associated with PTSS. Friend and family support were positively related to resilience. At the contextual level, community cohesion was positively associated with resilience, but not PTSS, and community disorder was unrelated to both outcomes. Findings demonstrate unique factors across the social ecology that differentially relate to PTSS and resilience. Variables at all three ecological levels were associated with resilience, whereas only individual and relational variables were related to PTSS. Replication with longitudinal data could inform treatments for trauma-exposed individuals that may mitigate PTSS and bolster resilience.
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