Diversity of adverse childhood experiences among adolescent mothers and the intergenerational transmission of risk to children's behavior problems

Developmental inflection point for the effect of maternal childhood adversity on children’s mental health from childhood to adolescence: Time-varying effect of gender differences

“…This effect was maintained until age 13 for both internalizing and externalizing problems and then remained a statistically significant predictor for internalizing problems until age 16. The detected intergenerational influences on children's mental health from childhood to adolescence in our study are consistent with prior studies (Stargel & Easterbrooks, 2020;Stepleton et al, 2018), adding to the few existing studies examining the intergenerational influences of childhood adversity on children's mental health beyond early childhood (Doi et al, 2021;Schickedanz et al, 2018). Further, consistent with the life course perspective, particularly the notion of a critical or sensitive period (Ben-Shlomo & Kuh, 2002;Braveman & Barclay, 2009;Nelson & Gabard-Durnam, 2020), the current study revealed a developmental inflection point when maternal childhood adversity rapidly gains salience, from ages 5 to 8, extending the relevant body of literature in an important direction.…”

Latent Classes of Adverse and Benevolent Childhood Experiences in a Multinational Sample of Parents and Their Relation to Parent, Child, and Family Functioning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Although the classes were generally differentiated by severity of ACEs/BCEs, there were also nuanced differences. Consistent with other research, one class in the current study was characterized by low levels of all adversity types, and another by high levels of all adversity types [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. In contrast, the classes with moderate levels of adversity were characterized mainly by the presence of emotional and physical abuse, emotional neglect, and loneliness, but not the high levels of family dysfunction that were present in the group with high levels of all adversity (e.g., family member incarceration, household mental health, household substance use, low SES).…”

“…Fewer studies have applied LCA specifically to samples of parents. In one study of adolescent mothers by Stargel and Easterbrooks (2020), a four-class model was identified, with classes characterized as having low adversity, high abuse, high household dysfunction, and a multiple adversity group [ 26 ]. Relative to the other classes, the low adversity group had significantly better maternal and child health.…”

“…The goal of the current study was to identify latent classes from indices of ACEs and BCEs in a sample of parents with school-age children, and to validate these classes by measuring their association with parent mental health (anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and substance use) and parenting behavior; child mental health (anger, anxiety, depression) and positive coping; and an overall measure of family functioning. Based on the exploratory and data-driven analysis of the current study, we did not make explicit hypotheses about the classes we expected to emerge; however, based on the extant literature, we hypothesized that there would be approximately four distinct classes, with one characterized by high co-occurrence of multiple adversities and one by overall low adversity [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. In relation to the validation analyses, we hypothesized that classes characterized by high levels of ACEs and low levels of BCEs would be associated with more mental health difficulties of parents and their children, poorer parenting quality, and higher family dysfunction compared to classes characterized by low ACEs and high BCES.…”

Effects of maternal adverse child experiences on parental maltreatment of children: An empirical study of mediating factors among Japanese mothers

“…Recent research has found that parental ACEs have intergenerational impacts on their children. For example, children raised by mothers with ACEs are more likely to have poor health (Félice et al, 2018), behavioural problems (Cooke et al, 2019; Stargel & Easterbrooks, 2020) and poor academic performance (Doi et al, 2020b). Our study points to the possibility that child maltreatment may be involved in the association between maternal ACEs and their child's developmental problems.…”