Child Maltreatment and Adult Health in a National Sample: Heterogeneous Relational Contexts, Divergent Effects?

• NCJ Number: 246786
• Journal: Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 38 Issue: 3 Dated: March 2014 Pages: 395-406
• Author(s): Markus H. Schafer; Patricia M. Morton; Kenneth F. Ferraro
• Date Published: March 2014
• Length: 12 pages
• Grant Number(s): R01AG033541
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute on Aging
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study of the long-term health consequences of child maltreatment analyzes the effects of maltreatment in the context of more general evaluations of parents by adults who had experienced maltreatment as children.

Abstract

These findings from the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) study support Bengtson and associates model of family solidarity. The study found that childhood maltreatment does not always negatively impact certain dimensions of family solidarity; some individuals can experience maltreatment and still report a satisfactory relationship with either or both parents. A significant proportion of middle-age and older-age adults who experienced frequent maltreatment as children nevertheless assessed the relationship with their offending parent as "excellent," "very good," or "good;" for example, 47 percent of the participants who had experienced physical and emotional maltreatment by their mothers, had positive feelings about her. Adults who experienced parental maltreatment as children, however, had a greater number of chronic medical conditions and physical symptoms, as well as lower self-rated health compared with the adults who had not been maltreated as children, but these effects of maltreatment were less pronounced among those who had favorable views of their maltreating parents compared to those who did not. Potential explanations of these findings are offered. The MIDUS study, from which data for the current study were drawn, was a representative survey of American adults ages 25-74 that was initiated in 1995 (Brim, Ryff, and Kessler, 2004). MIDUS respondents were selected by a random-digit dialing procedure that produced a sampling frame from all English-speaking non-institutionalized adults of the specified age in the contiguous 48 States. The overall response rate was 61 percent, and the final sample size was 3,032 men and women who completed both the telephone and mail interviews. 6 tables and 49 references