Prenatal and postnatal intimate partner violence, depression, and infant-mother touch.

Touch is a primary form of communication for mother-infant dyads in the infant's first year of life. Stressors such as intimate partner violence (IPV) and maternal depression experienced during the perinatal period may interfere with mother-infant touch via prenatal programming of the stress response and disrupted parenting. Mother-infant touch research typically focuses on maternal touch, while research on infant touch is limited. However, research suggests that infants sometimes lead interactive behavior, with mothers responding and adapting to their infants. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the effects of IPV and maternal depression on infant-led touch interactions and maternal touch responses. Touch behaviors were coded in 174 mother-infant dyads while they engaged in a free play. ANCOVA analyses indicated that male infants with pre- or postnatal IPV exposure initiated more negative touch (e.g., hitting, kicking, pushing) with their mothers than female or nonexposed male infants. IPV did not predict differences in maternal touch responses to infants, while postpartum depressive symptoms were associated with maternal decreased touch responsiveness to male infant touch. The results suggest that male infant touch behavior is particularly susceptible to prenatal or postnatal exposure to IPV. Importantly, aggressive behavior in early childhood predicts more aggressive behavior across time, and these early negative touch behaviors may be indicative of the beginning of a trajectory of increased physical aggression into childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Moreover, the results support extant findings that prenatal life is a sensitive period for postnatal development, including postnatal socially interactive behavior. Finally, depressed mothers of male infants exhibited decreased touch responsiveness, suggesting that depression may alter maternal interpretation of male infant cues, resulting in maternal withdrawal.

Attachment insecurity moderates the link between maternal childhood neglect and postpartum bonding to the infant.

Mothers who experienced childhood neglect are at increased risk of parenting difficulties in adulthood, but adult attachment relationships may be protective. Eighty-eight postpartum women seeking outpatient psychiatric care completed self-report measures on adverse childhood experiences, adult attachment, mental health symptoms, and bonding. Beyond the effects of maternal mental health on bonding, childhood neglect predicted bonding difficulties only in mothers with more insecure attachments, suggesting adult attachment as a potential point of intervention to reduce the intergenerational transmission of risk.

Intimate partner violence and positive parenting across early childhood: Comparing self-reported and observed parenting behavior.

The current study examined self-reported and observed positive (i.e., nurturing, sensitive, and responsive) parenting behavior among women who experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and through their early parenting years. Mother-child dyads were assessed during the third trimester of pregnancy and each year postpartum until age 4. Latent growth curve models of self-reported positive parenting suggested that IPV experienced during pregnancy was related to women reporting more gradual reductions in positive parenting between ages 1 and 4 and higher levels of positive parenting behavior at age 4. However, IPV experienced during pregnancy was associated with lower levels of observed positive parenting at age 4. These findings suggest that mothers who experience IPV during pregnancy may positively distort their perceptions of their positive parenting during early childhood, such that it is inconsistent with actual parenting behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Incremental effects of betrayal trauma and borderline personality disorder symptoms on suicide risk.

OBJECTIVE: Suicide is a problem on college campuses. One of the strongest predictors of suicide risk is symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Additional factors, such as trauma, also increase risk for suicide. One type of trauma that is especially insidious is 1 in which people are betrayed by others on whom they depend for support or protection (betrayal traumas). However, there is little research on the incremental effects of BPD symptoms and trauma with varying degrees of betrayal on suicide risk. METHOD: In this study, we examined the relative effects of BPD symptoms and traumatic experiences with varying degrees of betrayal on suicide risk in a sample of college students (N = 915) using a Bayesian approach to multiple linear regression. RESULTS: Results suggest that BPD symptoms and traumas with high and medium degrees of betrayal have incremental effects on suicide risk, although this effect differs by sex. CONCLUSION: These findings highlight the utility of assessing history of trauma over and above BPD symptoms in the prediction of suicide risk and have implications for future research and clinical intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Interpersonal Style and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Female Victims of Dating Violence.

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are some of the most common mental health symptoms women experience following exposure to dating violence (DV). However, not all women who experience DV exhibit PTSD symptoms. One factor that may influence whether or not women exhibit PTSD symptoms in the aftermath of DV exposure is interpersonal style, often operationalized in terms of two orthogonal dimensions, warmth and dominance. In this study, we examined the main and moderating effects of warmth and dominance on the association between DV and PTSD symptoms using latent moderating structural equation modeling in a sample of 303 female college students who reported DV exposure in the past year. Results indicated that warmth exerted a main effect predicting fewer PTSD symptoms. In addition, dominance moderated the association between DV and PTSD symptoms such that at high levels of DV, women who were high on dominance reported fewer PTSD symptoms than did women who were low on dominance. These findings suggest that aspects of interpersonal style may promote resilience to symptoms of posttraumatic stress following DV exposure. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Main and Moderating Influence of Temperament Traits on the Association Between Intimate Partner Violence and Trauma Symptoms.

Trauma symptoms are common among survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), although not all women who experience IPV develop trauma symptoms. One of the factors that may influence whether women develop trauma symptoms upon exposure to IPV is temperament. In this study, we examined the main and moderating effects of temperament traits (constraint, negative emotionality, and positive emotionality) on the association between IPV and trauma symptoms in a sample of young adult women ( N = 654) using a Bayesian approach to multiple linear regression to address significant non-normality in the data. Our results indicated that each temperament trait incrementally predicted trauma symptoms over and above the effects of IPV and other negative life events. Results further indicated that both negative emotionality and constraint moderated the influence of IPV on trauma symptoms such that IPV was positively associated with trauma symptoms at high levels of these traits but not at low levels. However, these effects differed depending on the type of violence experienced (physical, sexual, or psychological). These results extend previous research on the influence of temperament traits to the context of IPV; this underscores the importance of incorporating temperament in the study of IPV, as well as in the study of traumatic stress more generally.

Do different data analytic approaches generate discrepant findings when measuring mother-infant HPA axis attunement?

Attunement between mothers and infants in their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responsiveness to acute stressors is thought to benefit the child's emerging physiological and behavioral self-regulation, as well as their socioemotional development. However, there is no universally accepted definition of attunement in the literature, which appears to have resulted in inconsistent statistical analyses for determining its presence or absence, and contributed to discrepant results. We used a series of data analytic approaches, some previously used in the attunement literature and others not, to evaluate the attunement between 182 women and their 1-year-old infants in their HPA axis responsivity to acute stress. Cortisol was measured in saliva samples taken from mothers and infants before and twice after a naturalistic laboratory stressor (infant arm restraint). The results of the data analytic approaches were mixed, with some analyses suggesting attunement while others did not. The strengths and weaknesses of each statistical approach are discussed, and an analysis using a cross-lagged model that considered both time and interactions between mother and infant appeared the most appropriate. Greater consensus in the field about the conceptualization and analysis of physiological attunement would be valuable in order to advance our understanding of this phenomenon.