Mothers' Exposure to Domestic and Community Violence and Its Association with Toddler's Behavioral Outcomes

Background/purpose: Albeit abundant research has highlighted a link between exposure to violence and its detrimental effect on youth’s functioning and development, rarely are studies available which investigated the potential cumulative effect of maternal exposure to both types of violence on children.  Exposure to violence at home or in community has negative effects on parenting, maternal emotional and mental wellbeing, and subsequently, child behavioral and developmental issues.  Among mothers resides in urban neighborhoods, the presence of violence in the community and at home could be more than in other communities.  This study examined how maternal exposure to domestic and community violence would affect the behavioral and emotional outcomes of young children. The study also explored protective factors that could help ameliorate the negative, spill-over effects of violence on toddlers’ wellbeing.    

Methods: Data from the Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) study were used for our investigation.  The FFCW is a longitudinal study that followed a birth cohort since 1998 in large U.S. cities.  2,851 families were included in this study. Child behavioral outcomes were measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBSL): (1) aggression; (2) withdrawn behavior; and (3) anxiety/depression.  The community violence exposure questions included 7 items and were divided into two sub-scales: (1) direct experience/victimization; and (2) witnessing violence (e.g., saw someone being beaten).  Other covariates examined in the analyses included: depression, psychological domestic violence and physical domestic violence, social support, paternal support, substance use.  Demographic variables were controlled in the multivariate analyses.

Results: The result showed that the average age of mothers was 25.86 (SD=6.13), and about 21% of mothers were white, 47% black, and 31% other race.  About 37% of mothers witnessed community violence, 7% experienced direct victimization, 11% reported some physical domestic violence, and 53% reported some psychological domestic violence.  Approximately 53% of children were boy.  There was no difference in the mean of anxiety/depression between boys and girls while boys scored higher for aggression and withdrawn behavior.  The multiple regression results showed that direct experience/victimization and witnessing violence as well as psychological domestic violence were associated with higher aggressive behavior, withdrawn behavior, or anxiety/depression of children.  Paternal support and social support were found to be protective factors for child’s aggressive behavior and anxiety/depression.    

Conclusions/implications: This study found that maternal exposure to various forms of violence had negative effect on child’s behavior and emotional outcomes at 3^rd year follow-up.  Maternal exposure to community-level and interpersonal-level violence has negative effects on early child development and functioning.  Future research should examine complex paths between maternal violence exposure, overlap between community-level and interpersonal-level violence, mother’s parenting, maternal emotional/mental health, and child’s outcomes.  Moreover, it is necessary to connect mothers with victimization experience(s) to appropriate support to promote healthy functioning of their children.  Importantly, health professionals and social service providers should screen for development of children of mothers who may have witnessed or experienced victimization and make routine follow-ups.   Early intervention should be strongly encouraged to prevent a vicious cycle of internalizing and externalizing problems from a start.