Domestic Violence, Child Security & Child Mental Health

说明(申请人提供)：尽管伴侣间暴力增加了儿童对心理健康问题的脆弱性，但人们对正在展开的调解机制以及有助于形成家庭暴力和儿童适应不良之间联系的多种途径的强化和保护条件知之甚少，尤其是在儿童早期。为了解决这些差距，我们的广泛目标是在情绪安全理论的框架内确定家庭暴力与幼儿适应之间的联系所涉及的途径。 我们的具体目标包括：(1)考察直接暴露在伴侣间关系和父母教养困难之间是否中介了伴侣间暴力和儿童适应不良之间的联系；(2)检验了以下假设：父母教养困难和破坏性伙伴关系的中介作用可以通过儿童在伙伴间关系和亲子关系中保持情感安全的困难来进一步解释；(3)绘制儿童情感安全、阶段突出任务的解决和心理健康之间的发展相互作用图；以及(4)描绘家庭特征如何改变家庭过程、儿童情感安全和儿童心理健康之间的路径。 250名在与伴侣的关系中经历过一系列暴力的母亲和她们2岁的孩子将参加一项为期三波的纵向研究，测量时间间隔一年。为了解决早期文献中的方法局限性(例如，单一方法偏见；横断面设计；关注儿童功能的单一领域)，我们使用了多方法的前瞻性设计，该设计捕捉了儿童适应的多个水平(例如，症状、能力、神经内分泌功能)。我们的三波项目旨在增加在调解人和调解人模型中测试变量的时间和概念排序的能力，并促进绘制儿童心理健康轨迹中个体差异的性质和相关性的图表。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although interpartner violence increases child vulnerability to mental health problems, little is known about the unfolding mediating mechanisms and the potentiating and protective conditions that help shape the multiplicity of pathways underlying associations between domestic violence and child maladjustment, especially in early childhood. To address these gaps, our broad objective is to identify the pathways involved in the link between domestic violence and young children's adaptation within the framework of the emotional security theory. Our specific aims include: (1) examining whether direct exposure to the interpartner relationship and parenting difficulties mediate the link between interpartner violence and child maladjustment; (2) testing the hypothesis that the mediational role of parenting difficulties and exposure to destructive interpartner relations are further explained by child difficulties in preserving their emotional security in the interpartner and parent-child relationships; (3) charting the developmental interplay between child emotional security, resolution of stage-salient tasks, and mental health; and (4) delineating how family characteristics may alter paths between family processes, child emotional security, and child mental health. Two-hundred and fifty mothers, who have experienced a range of violence in relationships with their partners, and their 2-year-old children will participate in a three-wave longitudinal study, with measurement occasions spaced one year apart. To address earlier methodological limitations in the literature (e.g., monomethod bias; cross-sectional design; focus on a single domain of child functioning), we utilize a multi-method, prospective design that captures multiple levels of child adjustment (e.g., symptoms, competence, neuroendocrine functioning). Our three-wave project is designed to increase the power to test the temporal and conceptual ordering of our variables in mediator and moderator models and to facilitate the charting of the nature and correlates of individual differences in trajectories of child mental health.