Intergenerational effects of childhood maltreatment: The roles of parents’ emotion regulation and mentalization

Background: Children living with parents who have childhood maltreatment histories tend to develop compromised behavioral health outcomes, suggesting the intergenerational effects of child maltreatment. Objective: Driven by attachment theory, this study aims to identify the pathways from parents' childhood maltreatment to their child's behavioral problems and functioning. Participants and Setting: The sample of parent participants (N = 202) was recruited from an online data collection platform – Amazon Mechanical Turk. Methods: Structural equation modeling with the estimator of maximum likelihood was used to examine the intergenerational effects of child maltreatment. Results: This study identified two important mediators, i.e., parents' emotion regulation and parental mentalization. Parental childhood maltreatment had a positive association with parents' difficulties in emotion regulation (β = 0.45, p < 0.001), which in turn was positively associated with parental prementalizing mode (β = 0.47, p < 0.001). Parental prementalizing mode was then positively associated with child behavioral problems (β = 0.32, p < 0.001). The second significant path was from parental childhood maltreatment to their child functioning, which was mediated directly through parents' difficulties in emotion regulation (β = - 0.26, p < 0.05) without any sequential mediation through parental mentalization. Conclusion: This study advances our existing understanding of the complexities of child maltreatment and informs an intergenerational approach in terms of screening and intervention, so professionals can effectively work for families to alleviate the enduring negative effects of child maltreatment, to reduce prohibitive social expenditures of mental health services, and to promote social justice.