Adverse Childhood Experiences on Parenting Resilience: Findings from Child Maltreatment Prevention Programs

Background and Purpose: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with long-term negative impacts on physical and mental health. However, the impact of ACEs on parenting characteristics is not well understood, particularly for parents who have been identified as ‘at risk’ of perpetrating child maltreatment.   This study uses data from community-based child maltreatment prevention programs to examine relationships between ACEs and parenting resilience.

Methods: Parents who participated in child maltreatment programs in 16 Texas counties were asked to complete a voluntary pre-survey that incorporates multiple standardized instruments detailing their risk and protective factors for child maltreatment. Survey measures included the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure developed by researchers at the Center for Disease Control; the resilience subscale of the Parents’ Assessment of Protective Factors Instrument; Mental Health Inventory 5 (MHI-5); the 6-item UNCOPE screening tool for substance use; and the Hurt, Insulted, Threatened with Harm and Screamed (HITS) domestic violence screening. Multiple linear regression was employed to examine the relationship between the measured risk and protective factors and parental resilience. In the first model, childhood trauma was included as the independent variable with parenting resilience as the dependent variable. In the second model, additional predictors (substance use, alcohol use, mental health and domestic violence) were added as covariates to examine their potential mediating effects on the relationship between ACEs and parental resilience.

Results:  A total of 1,256 caregivers completed the survey. The mean age of caregivers was 29. The majority of caregivers were female (94%) and Hispanic (86%). Almost half answered the survey in Spanish (49%) and had an annual income of less than $10,000 (46%). Slightly over half were single or divorced (52%). A history of more than one ACE was reported by 62% of caregivers. The mean score on the parenting resilience scale was 3.47, which is considered a high level of parental resilience based on the validated measure thresholds.  The results of the first regression model suggest that ACE scores were a significant predictor of parenting resilience (p=0.001), and explained 2.7% of the variance in parenting resilience scores. When mental health, substance use, alcohol use and domestic violence were added to the model, ACE scores were no longer a significant factor in the model (β= -0.0008, p=0.373). In the multivariate model, mental health scale scores were the only significant predictor of parenting resilience (β=-0.10, p<0.001); the model as a whole explained 14.2% of the variance in parenting resilience.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings suggest that parenting resilience is impacted by both childhood trauma and mental health with the mental health of the parent mediating the . Thus, childhood trauma itself may not be the primary risk factor for child maltreatment perpetration. Rather, mental health issues, which may be related to childhood trauma appear to be associated with parenting resilience. Programs intending to prevent child maltreatment should address parent mental health and childhood trauma history.