Prospective Associations Between Early Childhood Intimate Partner Violence Exposure and Middle Childhood Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology

Abstract

Co-occurring adversities are common for young children with child protective services (CPS) involvement, with high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in this population. Despite extensive research linking childhood IPV exposure to later psychopathology, fewer studies have examined the prospective associations between IPV exposure and psychopathology using a dimensional approach. Here, we conducted secondary analyses of data from a randomized controlled trial of a parenting intervention for CPS-involved children, examining the associations between early childhood IPV exposure (i.e., threat), co-occurring deprivation, and middle childhood internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Adversity variables were coded from data collected when children were infants ( N = 249, M age = 7.97 months) through 48-month assessments; internalizing and externalizing psychopathology were modeled as latent variables reflecting the mean of data from yearly assessments between ages 8 to 10. Results of our structural equation model demonstrated that, accounting for the effects of co-occurring deprivation, IPV exposure was significantly associated with both internalizing, β = .38, p = .001, and externalizing, β = .26, p = .019, symptoms. Results suggest links between early childhood IPV exposure (i.e., threat) and later psychopathology. Findings support screening and intervention efforts to mitigate the developmental sequelae of IPV exposure among CPS-involved children.

Interplay between interparental relationship quality and infant temperament predicts toddler transdiagnostic psychopathology.

“…Second, results suggest that DMAP would be strengthened by considering larger family systems and the role of the interparental relationship in contributing to aspects of threat or deprivation. Although various DMAP studies have used destructive forms of interparental conflict, specifically intimate partner violence, as an index of threat (e.g., Lee et al, 2023; Machlin et al, 2019; Vogel et al, 2021), no DMAP studies to our knowledge have focused on aspects of the interparental relationship along the deprivation enrichment continuum. Thus, our results make a novel contribution to the literature by demonstrating that being deprived of high-quality interparental emotional intimacy is a unique risk factor for the development of child general psychopathology—for children high in trait negative emotionality—extremely early in life.…”

Reducing Family Violence Through Child Welfare Intervention: A Propensity Score-Matched Study of Fathers for Change

“…Children's exposure to IPV is prevalent, with nearly 20% of a U.S. national sample of 4,000 children and adolescents exposed to IPV in their young lives (Finkelhor et al, 2015). IPV-exposed children face serious risk of developmental and emotional-behavioral repercussions (Briggs-Gowan et al, 2019;Gilbert et al, 2013;Grasso et al, 2016aGrasso et al, , 2016bLee et al, 2022;Weir et al, 2021). Additionally, IPV-exposed children are exponentially more likely to experience other forms of harsh parenting (Chiesa et al, 2018;Grasso et al, 2016a) and parenting behaviors that cross the threshold into child maltreatment (Ahmadabadi et al, 2018).…”