Father-Mother Co-Involvement in Child Maltreatment: Associations of Parental Substance Use, Inadequate Housing, Medical Conditions, Intimate Partner Violence, and Prior Perpetration History with Different Maltreatment Types

Background and Purpose: Approximately 618,000 children are victims of child abuse and neglect in the United States, with over 483,000 individuals being responsible for such child maltreatment. Most individuals involved in child maltreatment are parents (77.2%), with a fifth of the cases (20.7%) involving both mothers and fathers. Mother-father co-involvement in child maltreatment has received relatively little attention in research, despite evidence suggesting that mother-father co-involved child maltreatment is more severe and injurious than one-parent-only child maltreatment (Kobulsky & Wildfeuer, 2019). This study applied family systems theory and used national child welfare administrative data to address the following research question: Which dyadic parental risk factors are associated with mother-father co-involved physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse?

Methods: We used data from the 2018 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. The analytic sample focused on families in which mother-father pairs were identified to be co-involved in maltreatment against their children and that maltreatment subsequently led to foster care entry of the same children (n=6,996 unique families). Families were 58% White, 18% Other, 14% Black, and 9% Latinx. On average, mothers were 30.14 years old (SD=7.07), fathers 33.27 years old (SD=8.89), and children 2.96 years old (SD=4.14). Independent variables included seven binary measures (yes/no)— parental substance use, mental health problems, medical/disability conditions, inadequate housing, economic insecurity, intimate partner violence (IPV), and prior maltreatment history—represented at the dyadic parental level. Dependent variables included binary measures (yes/no) of four child maltreatment types: physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted for each child maltreatment outcome, controlling for child and parent sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age, race and ethnicity) and variations in child welfare practices across states.

Results: Regression results showed that IPV was associated with higher odds of mother-father co-involved neglect (AOR=1.93, 95% CI [1.34,2.78]) and emotional abuse (AOR=6.71, 95% CI [3.64,12.37]). Parental substance use (AOR=2.72, 95% CI [1.82,4.06]), inadequate housing (AOR=2.29, 95% CI [1.44,3.64]), and prior maltreatment history (AOR=2.26, 95% CI [1.57,3.24]) were all associated with higher odds of mother-father co-involved neglect, but lower odds of physical abuse (substance use: AOR=0.83, 95% CI [0.69,0.99]; inadequate housing: AOR=0.63, 95% CI [0.48,0.81]; prior maltreatment history: AOR=0.50, 95% CI [0.42,0.61]). Parental medical/disability conditions (AOR=1.97, 95% CI [1.03,3.75]) were associated with higher odds of mother-father co-involved sexual abuse, whereas parental substance use (AOR=0.19, 95% CI [0.10,0.36]) was associated with lower odds of sexual abuse.

Conclusions and Implications: Overall, we found differential associations between dyadic parental risk factors and the four child maltreatment types examined. Importantly, we identified parents’ prior maltreatment history, substance use, medical/disability conditions, inadequate housing, and IPV as key dyadic parental risk factors associated with physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, or emotional abuse. Implications include addressing these key dyadic parental risk factors as possible levers for programmatic and policy change in the prevention of future recurrence of mother-father co-involved child maltreatment incidents. Additional implications include more nuanced ways of addressing multiple risk factors within the family system.