A Longitudinal Study of Household Food Insecurity, Maternal Depression, and Physical Child Abuse in a National Sample of at Risk Families

Purpose: Families in the US move in and out of food insecurity for a variety of reasons. Even sporadic and less severe levels of food insecurity over time can negatively affect maternal and child wellbeing. The negative effect maternal depression has on child interactions, parenting skills, and child abuse and neglect has been well documented. And even though food insecurity and depression may both be correlated with child abuse, no study has examined the probability of child abuse following the onset of food insecurity or depression. The goal of this study is to determine the relative risk of a parent physically abusing following a change in food insecurity status compared to change in maternal depression symptoms.

Methods: Data from the ages 12, 14, and 16 interviews of the Longitudinal Studies on Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) were used for this study. LONGSCAN is a consortium of research studies utilizing common procedures and measurements of child wellbeing and maltreatment. The Parent-Child Conflict Tactic Scale was administered at each interview, and measured a parent’s use of minor, including spanking with an open hand, pinching, and hitting the body with an object, or severe, including kicked, choked, burned, or hit with closed fist repeatedly, physical assaults. Parental use of minor or severe assaults was an ordinal variables, with any severe assault in the previous year = 2, any minor without a severe assault =1, and no minor or severe assault = 0. Food insecurity was measured by 8 items in the Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project Scale and was dichotomous. Maternal depression was assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and was a continuous measure.

Results: At any given time, 67% of parents did not physically abuse their child, 28% reported a minor physical assault, and 5% reported severely assaulting their child. Exactly half of mothers at any given time were depressed, and 33% of parents reported being food insecure at some point over the 5 years. Results from bivariate analyses showed that depressed mothers and those who were food insecure reported more minor and severe physical abuse. Fixed-effects ordinal logistic regression results indicate that change in household food insecurity status was associated with 1.74 greater odds (95% CI, 1.34-2.27) of a minor or severe physical assault. A separate model found that change in depression status was associated with 1.37 greater odds (1.07-1.77) of minor or severe physical assault. When both food insecurity and depression were enter into the same model, change in depression status was no longer statistically significant, but change in household food insecurity was associated with 1.69 greater odds (1.29-2.22) of minor or severe physical assault.

Conclusion: Although maternal depression may play a role in child victimization, the results indicate that becoming food insecure may be a better predictor of risk over time. These results have important intervention and prevention implications, as increasing a mother’s access to food is not a common approach, but one that may inhibit the use of punitive physical discipline and injurious assault.