Adult Resilience among Maltreated Children in the Chicago Longitudinal Study: An Exploration of Protective Processes

Over the last several years, research examining the link between childhood maltreatment and resilience has burgeoned. Findings demonstrate that maltreated children are at high-risk for a multitude of maladaptive outcomes, i.e., multifinality, and when compared to disadvantaged yet non-maltreated peers, achieve resilience much less often. Mediation studies are, however, uncovering processes that mitigate the effects of abuse and neglect. Such protective processes include the development of self-regulation, exercise of “ego resilience” and “ego control,” building of prosocial friendships, and bonding with a guardian (Bolger and Patterson, 2003).

As is normative, these studies suffer from several methodological limitations. First, they often define and measure resilience solely within one domain of functionality. Second, many capture the outcome of interest only in childhood or adolescence, and third, few investigate protective processes longitudinally. This current study attempts to address these limitations with data from the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS). The following two research questions are explored. First, do maltreated children in the CLS differ significantly from their non-maltreated counterparts on rates of adult resilience? Second, what factors or developmental processes mediate the relation, if found, between childhood maltreatment and adult resilience?

The CLS investigates a cohort of 1,539 low-income, minority individuals who were born in 1979 or 1980 and attended kindergarten programs in the Chicago Public Schools. The study prospectively followed participants throughout childhood and into young adulthood. Data were collected in multiple waves from various sources, including participants, parents, teachers and administrative records from several public databases.

Measures for this study spanned multiple domains, various sources, and a wide age range. Educational attainment, mental and behavioral health, income, and criminality data, covering ages 18-24, comprised the adult resilience outcome. Proposed mediators, measured from ages 12-17, emerged from the domains of social adjustment, cognitive advantage, school support, and family support. Any indicated report of abuse/neglect, from ages 0 through 11, represented the primary explanatory variable.

Probit analyses revealed that the maltreatment measure was significantly related to adult resilience when controlling for an array of environmental, family, and individual factors. Specifically, only about one-quarter of the maltreated versus nearly one-half of the non-maltreated children earned adult resilience. These main effect findings were robust to different specifications of both the resilience and childhood maltreatment measures. Exploratory mediation results, produced with hierarchical logit and probit regression analyses, indicated that socioemotional competence, academic achievement, school quality, and residential stability facilitated adult resilience among maltreated children. Structural equation modeling, with the LISREL 8.7 processor, confirmed these results with one exception: academic achievement disappeared as a significant mechanism through which maltreated children realize adult resilience.

Findings suggest that although maltreated children are vulnerable to deleterious adult outcomes across domains, resilience is attainable for at least a minority through several distinct pathways. Considering these results when designing maltreatment interventions could enhance adult adaptation among non-resilient, maltreated children.

Bolger, K. & Patterson, C. (2003). Sequelae of child maltreatment. In S. Luthar (Ed.), Resilience and vulnerability: Adaptation in the context of childhood adversities (pp. 156-181). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.